LIFE AND TIMES 



DANIEL DE FOE 



THE 



LIFE AND TIMES 



OF 



DANIEL DE FOE: 



REMARKS DIGRESSIVE AND DISCURSIVE. 



WILLIAM CHADWICK. 



LONDON: 
JOHN RUSSELL SMITH, 

36, SOHO SQUARE. 



M.DCCC.LIX. 



London: 

F. Pickton, Printer, 

Perry's Peace, 29, Oxford Street. 






THE PREFACE. 



A Preface to a book is, singularly enough, always written 
after the completion of the book ; and ought in fairness to be 
placed at the end, rather than before the commencement. 

This is not the age for Prefaces, but yet I may be pardoned 
for transgressing the rule of the times, if I only keep within 
the limits of moderation. What do I gather from all my 
De-Foe reading but the force of that passage in scripture, 
" Cast thy bread upon the waters, and thou shalt find it after 
many days!' Old James Foe, butcher, of Cripplegate St. Giles, 
cast his bread upon the water when he educated his son 
Daniel at the Stoke Newington Academy for — for what? 
Daniel was a hosier, merchant, pantile maker, statesman, 
poet, philosopher, free-trader, novelist — in short, everything, 
from the desolate island of Juan Fernandez to a felon's cell in 
Newgate. Daniel lived neglected and died in gaol — he died- 
in 1731 ; and yet left that which is not exhausted in 1859 — 
his opinions recorded during a long, turbulent, and indus- 
trious life. The Dissenter still educates at his academy — he 
throws the bread upon the vjaters; and only let the fostering 



VI THE PREFACE. 

sunshine of persecution impart its fertilizing influences upon 
the deposited grain ; and both crowned heads and saddled 
backs shall see the results at the appointed time of harvest, 
by the drudge of the office, the warehouse, or the shop being 
stamped into the writer or the patriot. The pillory and the 
gaol shut up the hosier's shop, and gave us Robinson Crusoe. 
Yes ! the grinder's wheel was stopped in Bedford streets and 
lanes ; and years of imprisonment in the borough gaol gave 
us the Pilgrims Progress instead. Blindness, neglect, and 
persecution, gave us the Paradise Lost. A twelve years' 
imprisonment in the Tower gave Sir Walter Raleigh leisure 
to write a History of the World ; and imprisonment, pillory, 
and ears-shearing, set Prynne to write as many volumes as 
would fill an ordinary cart. Yes, and I verily believe that a 
good ducking in the Thames or Serpentine would force John 
Bright, the patriot of Rochdale, upon my Reform Bill, in the 
place of his own. 

WILLIAM CHADWICK. 



Aeksey, near Doncaster, 
March 18, 1859. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter I. — Reasons for writing this book — Early years of Daniel De 
Foe — Dr. Eachard's account of the condition of the clergy — 
Roger L'Estrange — De Foe's Speculum Crape-gownorum — The 
Monmouth invasion — John Tutchin — Position of James II. — 
The Revolution — The modern education scheme— The Bill of 

Rights— The Book of Sports 1 

_ * 

Chapter II. — Reign of William III. — The True-born Englishman — De 
Foe in Newgate — Made accountant to the commissioners of the 
glass duty — De Foe on projects — Education of women — Occa- 
sional Conformity — King William and his Parliament — De Foe's 
earlier political pamphlets — Influence of the stock-jobbers — De 
Foe on Occasional Conformity — John How — The Succession Bill 
— The Kentish Petition, and the Legion Memorial — War of the 
Succession — De Foe on the Original Power of the People — Dis- 
solution of Parliament, and " Legion's New Paper " — Death of 
King William — Accession of Queen Anne, and High Church in 
favour — De Foe's Shortest Way with Dissenters — The Tackers — 
Rights of Royalty — De Foe's trial and sentence — Robert Harley 
— Trial of William Colepeper 57 

Chapter III. — De Foe's activity while in Newgate — His tracts on 
Occasional Conformity — Arrogance of High Church — Hostility 
to De Foe — His name used surreptitiously 197 

Chapter IV. — " Giving Alms no Charity " — Provisions for Pauperism 
— Marlborough and High Church — Haymarket Theatre and the 
Kit-Cat Club— The Church of England in the Colonies— De 
Foe's " Consolidator " — The World in the Moon — Dissent and 
Passive Obedience — Case of Abraham Gill 225 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

PACE 

Chapter V. — De Foe employed by Harley — A Freeholder of England 
— The parliamentary franchise, and bribery at elections — De 
Foe's dangers — His peace-and-union principles — The ghost of 
Mrs. Veal — Evils of private madhouses — Joint-stock companies 
■ — Drury Lane Theatre and the High-Church party — The law of 
debtor and creditor — De Foe's embarrassments 269 

Chapter VI. — De Foe's Jure Divino — The Union with Scotland — De 

Foe in Edinburgh — His relations with the Government . . .309 

Chapter VII. — Swift and the Government pamphleteers — Trial of 
Sacheverell — Popular hostility to the Dissenters — High-Church 
riots — Discouragement of the Whigs — The Calves' Head Club — 
Dissolution of Parliament and turbulence of the elections — Cha- 
racter of Jonathan Swift — Justice perverted by politics . . .334 

Chapter VIII. — Taxation of the Press — Attempt to assassinate Harley 
— De Foe at war with both parties — A new blow at the Dissenters 
— The peace of Utrecht — De Foe's defence of his principles in 
the Review — Conduct of the parties towards him — His Mercator, 
and opinions on commerce 374 

Chapter IX. — De Foe's opinions on the peace — His pamphlets relating 
to the succession of the house of Hanover — De Foe's consistency 
and honesty — Persecuted for his free-trade principles — Plots 
against civil and religious liberty in the Commons, &c. &c. . . 400 

Chapter X. — Illness and death of Queen Anne — De Foe's Family 
Instructor — Robinson Crusoe — Thanksgiving at St. Paul's — 
Complete English Tradesman, and other works — De Foe's illness 
and death 435 



THE 



LIFE OF DANIEL DE FOE 



CHAPTER I. 

When an inexperienced and untried writer presumes to take up 
pen on a subject so various and so complex as that involved in one 
of the most stirring lives of the most stirring characters of the most 
stirring times of English history, he may well crave time for inves- 
tigating the charge of presumption which might fairly be brought 
against him for attempting such a task. How, it may be asked, 
came you to presume to write a Life of Daniel De Eoe ? How, 
indeed ! I ask that question to myself — How? Well, in Septem- 
ber, 1856, my late worthy and lamented friend John Collinson and 
myself took one of our many excursions into the romantic district 
of Yorkshire known as Craven ; and arriving at Skipton in the even- 
ing, repaired to the Devonshire Hotel, had tea, and then sat down 
in the common room, where a gentleman of business related, for 
two hours together, how once, near Leicester, Splasher ran away 
with him in a gig. Being fairly run down with the tongue, evi- 
dently under less control than the horse, I left the company to 
visit an adjoining shop for the sale of old pictures, books, china, 
and the thousand et ceteras which are in request with the English 
collector. I found a lot of old trash, the sweepings of the shelves 
and floor of the library of the last of the Vavasours of Weston 
Underwood, in Wharfedale. I selected one work, of three volumes, 

1 



2 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

in 12mo, a book of travels through England, by some party un- 
known. This work I read, and was struck with the ready talent of 
the writer, as well as his unscrupulousness ; for he appeared never 
at a loss in completing his task — his book. I read with admiration 
at the power of pen displayed in it, till admiration at pen ripened 
into wonder at other powers. I read till I came to page 102 : 
"This town" (Doncaster), Mr. Camden says, "was burnt entirely 
to the ground, anno 759/' and was hardly recovered in his time. 
" But," adds this mysterious author, u it now looks more decayed 
by time than accident, and the houses, which seem ready to fall, 
might rise again to more advantage after another conflagration ." 
The brief sentence just quoted, stimulated to inquiry as to the 
author — his pursuits, his character, his life, his times, his death ; 
and soon placed me in possession of seventy or more works written 
by the same ready pen; this was followed by deeper investigation 
into the erratic waywardness of this ingenious writer, and led me to 
take up pen myself, in order, if possible, to throw some additional 
ray of light on the character of one of Britain's greatest of geniuses 
— Daniel De Foe, the writer of Robinson Crusoe, and (may I add 
also ?) of the Complete Tradesman — a work which I consider second 
to none in the English language, and the work which formed the 
groundwork of the character of the great Benjamin Franklin, for 
that work is Franklin all over. Such is my apology for writing ; 
such is my Preface. 1 

The hero of these pages, Daniel Foe, or De Foe, as he chose to 
call himself when arrived at manhood, under the impression that 
a De, somehow or other, legitimately belonged to the Foes, or, as I 
would read the word, Vaux of the Vauxes or Fauxes of Northamp- 
tonshire, where his grandfather lived in comfortable circumstances 

1 Since investigating and writing the life of Daniel De Foe, the supposed author of 
the above tour, I am led to believe that the work is not his, for he died in 1731, and 
there are facts and adventures narrated as having been seen and encountered in 1732, 
one year after De Foe was buried in Bunhill Fields Cemetery. What must I say to 
this ? — that it does not come up to Mrs. Veal, whe died at Dover on Friday, and went 
to have an hour's chat with her old friend Mrs. Bargrave, at Canterbury, on Saturday, 
the day following. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 3 

as a yeoman, at Elton, or Eltington, in the north-west corner of 
that county. 

It is a singular coincidence with Foe and De Foe, that Devereux 
and Vaux or Faux are thoroughly Northamptonshire names of the 
highest antiquity, and also of the highest respectability ; and if Foe 
were right in the supposition that a De once constituted a part of 
his family name, we have no alternative but to fall back upon 
Devereux, without we suppose that the simple Foe was a Flemish 
or Dutch or French Protestant importation, along with the straw- 
plat of Dunstable, or the bobbin-lace of Northampton or Bedford. 
Foe not being satisfactory, as not complete, according to the old 
custom or usage, in spelling the family name, the De must be added; 
so we have De Foe, a very humble imitation, no doubt, of the old 
Northamptonshire stock, Devereux. Well, then, James Foe, a butcher 
in Cripplegate St. Giles, came from Elton, or Eltington, where his 
father lived, and was, according to the investigation and discovery 
of George Chalmers, Esq., Daniel Foe, of that place, yeoman ; and 
this James had a son Daniel, who chose to add a De to his name, 
and thus became Daniel De Foe; and this individual is to form 
the subject of our writing. 1 

Daniel Foe, or De Foe as he called himself, was born in London, 
in the year 1661, and, being the son of dissenting parents, his name 
does not appear on the register of his father's parish ; for their 
minister, Dr.Annesley, had been rector of St. Giles's till ejected by 
Charles II., as one of the thousands ejected and persecuted even 
unto death in that thoughtless reign ; after which he preached in 
a conventicle or meeting-house in Little St. Helen's, Bishopsgate 
Street, to numbers of his former parishioners; among the rest 
was the sturdy, independent, self-relying family — the Foes. Dr. 



1 With respect to De Foe's Northamptonshire origin, I am induced to believe, after 
various inquiries at Elton, Elkington, Etton, Welton, and their neighbourhoods, for 
Foes, Voes, or De Voes, or De Eoes, or any name from which Foe could be expected to 
be derived, that James Foe, butcher, of Cripplegate St. Giles, London, never had a 
Northamptonshire origin, but that his ancestor probably came, in the reign of Queen 
Elizabeth, from the Spanish Netherlands, as a persecuted Protestant refugee, and that 
Daniel De Foe was of the genus and species of the London water-cress criers of our day. 

1* 



4 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Annesley was much beloved by his flock, and by young Foe amongst 
the rest, for he wrote an elegy on him :— 

'Twas spoke from heaven, the best of men must die ; 

No patent 's sealed for immortality : 

Not God's own favourites can shun the stroke ; 

Even God himself can not the law revoke ; 

He can't, unless he should at once repeal 

The eternal laws of Nature ; change his will ; 

Declare his works imperfect, life restore 

To all that 's dead, and be a God no more. 

The world, whose nature is to fade and die, 

Must change, and take up immortality ; 

And time, which to eternity rolls on, 

Must change, and be eternity begun. 

All things must ever live, or man must die ; 

The law 's supreme, and Nature must obey. 

How vain, then, and impertinent is grief, 

Which nor to dead nor living gives relief ! 

Sighs for departed friends are senseless things, 

Which them no help, nor us no comfort brings. 

Tears on the graves, where breathless bodies lie, 

Our ignorance or atheism imply ; 

Ashes and sackcloth, cries and renting clothes, 

Of folly more than our affection shows ; 

For grief is nothing, properly, but rage, 

And God himself 's the object we engage. 

Of the boyhood of De Foe nothing is known, except that at the 
early age of fourteen he was placed in an academy at Newington 
Green, under the direction of the Rev. Charles Morton, an inde- 
fatigable instructor and profound scholar — as all the Mortons were 
likely to be, either as persecuting Catholics at Bawtry and Scrooby, 
where they rooted out the Pilgrim Fathers from the conventicle at 
Scrooby Inn, or educating Daniel De Foe, the father of John 
Wesley, Timothy Cruso (probably a schoolfellow of the writer 
of Selkirk's history), Hannot of Yarmouth, Nathaniel Taylor, 
Mr. Owen, and others, including Kitt Battersby, young Jenkins, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



Hew ling, and other Western martyrs, with Lawrence of Nantwich, 
who was with Mr. Morton nntil the time when, in the year 1685, 
he was driven by persecution from Newington Green, and obliged 
to seek shelter and safety in the wilds of America, where he became 
vice-president of Harvard College, New England. What De Foe 
learnt at Mr. Morton's is not known ; but, as he was fellow-student 
with some of the first men of the day, it is only fair to suppose that 
he went through a rigid course of mental discipline, at a time when 
Oliver Heywood, of North-Owram, used to preach sermons of five 
hours' duration, and once extended even to six hours, when a dis- 
covery was made that his watch had not been wound up, which 
threw the preacher out one hour. As to how many languages 
De Foe was master of, nothing is known ; for his boasting of his 
knowledge of this or that was only produced by the insulting 
taunts of Tutchin, Dunton, Oldmixon, Lesley, L'Estrange, and 
others, the hired tools of arbitrary power, and the slang writers of 
his day, who charged him with ignorance because he kept a hosier's 
shop. This imputation of hosier was the banter of the whole 
herd of hack scribes, the paid rabble of the pen, upon this man 
for years. Ignorant as he was, he was more than a match for 
the whole ignominious crew of these hired scribes, as many of 
his works, such as the Complete Tradesman, Robinson Crusoe, 
Jure Divino, the Tempest, and the Plague, with others, fully tes- 
tify. De Foe had a singular mixture of wit, respectability, and 
even personal vanity, on the one hand, and high, fixed, courageous 
moral principle, on the other; and I could fancy that the father 
brought the wit and vanity along with the name, while the heavy 
principles of rigid virtue came by the mother, some fixed bright 
star of Dr. Annesley's conventicled members. De Foe's mother's 
name is never mentioned ; so that we know not w^ho she was ; but- 
Full many a gem of purest ray serene 
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear ; 
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 

Many of De Foe's biographers relate a variety of anecdotes con- 
nected with his early life, which 1 am obliged to omit for want of 



6 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

evidence of their truth ; those writers might have evidence, and on 
that evidence they may write, but for want of that evidence I can 
not write : — I regret this, but so it is. I know I shall write only a 
dull book, but so it must be — so let it be ; a dull book for want of 
materials, yes ! dull enough, for I will not write what is false. Now, 
we have a character of a servant, written by James Foe, the father 
of Daniel, when a very old man, living in lodgings in Broad Street, 
at the Bell, in 1705. This character appears to be written for a 
purpose, and bears in it all the precision of the style of the son, 
Daniel De Foe, whom I believe to have been the dictator or prompter 
of this certificate of good conduct. There was a brawl or contention 
at Pinners' Hall Meeting-house, on the conduct of the minister, 
and old James Foe had to write a testimonial as to the character of 
a young woman who had lived with him sixteen years before, and 
left with a good character, to Mr. Cave, the minister. This pro- 
duction I believe to be the work of Daniel the son, and not of 
James the father, which it professes to be. 

Old James Foe ended his days in lodgings, and died without a 
will, and probably in needy circumstances ; and this certificate of 
good conduct of a servant, who had left his service sixteen years 
before with a character, is all that is recorded of him. Perhaps 
the records of Dr. Annesley's Chapel might throw some light on 
the subject of the marriage of James Foe, and bring to light the 
name of the woman who was the mother of Daniel. I have the 
impression that this woman, who has never been named by any of 
Daniel De Foe's biographers, was a truly great woman, pious, and 
of rigidly firm decision of character on all questions worthy of call- 
ing forth an opinion. 

Daniel De Foe having been born in 1661, and having gone to 
Mr. Morton's academy at fourteen years of age, or in 1675, where 
he remained for five years, or until 1680, he left that academy in 
that year at the age of nineteen. 

The first effort made by De Foe as an author, was on the Turkish 
war, on which he took the ground of argument very opposite to the 
popular feeling of the time, when all cried out for a British alliance 
with the revolted Hungarians, supported by the Turks, against the 



LIFE OF DE FOE. / 

ruling power in Hungary, the Emperor of Austria ; while De Foe 
stood alone against that view of the question, and took nearly the 
same line of argument on the Turkish alliance of that time with 
Britain, that Mr. Cobden has taken at a later period on another 
Turkish war with a British alliance. De Foe maintained that any 
kind of Christianity, however corrupt, in Austria or Hungary, was 
to be preferred to Mahomedanism in any shape ; and that a sup- 
port of the Turk against the Christian, was the support of the 
worse against the better. 

The next effort of his pen in the same year, 1682, was a 
pamphlet in answer to Roger L'Estrange's Guide to the Inferior 
Clergy, entitled "Speculum Crape - gownorum ; or, a Looking- 
Glas3 for the Young Academicks, new Foyl'd: with Reflections 
on some of the late high-flown Sermons. To which is added, An 
Essay towards a Sermon of the Newest Fashion. By a Guide 
to the Inferior Clergy. Ridentem discere verum, Quis vetat? 
London: Printed for E. Rydal, 1682." This work was taken 
from Dr. John Eachard's Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt 
of the Clergy and Religion enquired into. I have not a copy of De 
Foe's book, for it is one of the scarcest of his pamphlets. It is 
not, therefore, in my power to make extracts from De Foe, and I 
may be pardoned if I nse Eachard instead. The work is valuable 
and worth quoting ; and therefore I will make the best use of my 
judgment in choosing extracts, though I shall not pretend to make 
any alterations such as De Foe made, almost to the ruin of the 
Norwich crape trade; for his coupling crape gowns and clerical 
inferiority, at once discarded for ever the universal use of crape for 
waistcoats, cassocks, gowns, &c, among the inferior clergy of the 
Church of England ; and this he did by writing a burlesque on 
honest Dr. Eachard's valuable work of advice to the clergy of the 
English Church. 

It should be stated, that after the year 1662, when the Act of 
Uniformity passed, and the Dissenters became as respectable as 
numerous, the high-flyers of the Church of England increased in 
force and in the venom of their malignity against them ; and the 
profligate press of a debased and bribed talent of a sold people, sold 



8 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

to France to all intents and purposes, by a degraded sovereign 
(Charles II.) poured out all its phials of wrath and unscrupulous 
malignity upon the heads of the only sound part of the population, 
the Dissenting priesthood, who refused compliance with the religious 
injunctions of the Act of Uniformity of 1662. Amongst this herd of 
violent unscrupulous malignity stood first, as a public writer in the 
pay of the priesthood, Roger L'Estrange, a man who, according to 
Bishop Burnet, was the chief manager of all those angry writings, 
which he published every week under the title of the Observator (a 
kind of newspaper of one or more sheets), written against the 
Dissenters, and published about the year 1681. He was a writer 
paid by the court and clergy, and drew considerable sums for the 
services he rendered to the party. His vile productions raised a 
violent ferment amongst the clergy, who, with great heat and in- 
discretion vented their rage, both in the pulpits and common con- 
versation, but most particularly at the elections of members of 
Parliament, against the Dissenters: a course of procedure which 
drew much hatred and censure upon them. I/Estrange was very 
unscrupulous as a writer, but yet curious in searching after 
novelties in ages past. In him I find the religious sect of the 
" Smectymnuans, a sort of cattel whose task it was to pray and 
preach royalty and kingly government out of repute, to make room 
for their goodly Directory, since the whole tribe of Adonirams are 
cut off and extinct." And it was in answer to this I/Estrange that 
De Foe wrote his work, to show to all the world that the Dissenters 
did not alone possess all the preaching absurdities of the kingdom, 
nor yet all the ignorance; for the practice of sending lads from 
Northern schools to Cambridge, by the carrier with his packhorses, 
was a great evil in the university education in the reign of Charles II. 
Poor youths were sent as sizars without any previous calculation as 
to college expenses, long vacations, and all the et ceteras entailed 
upon a youth destined for a clergyman of the Church of England. 
Dr. Eachard, who had been master of Katharine Hall and vice- 
chancellor of the university, complains of this want of forethought 
as to money matters, and also of want of knowledge in the youths 
themselves, who had frequently to be sent back by the first carrier 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 9 

seated on the pack as returned goods for the North. Dr. Eachard's 
work is very severe, but yet the high-flyers, by their malignity 
in writing on the Dissenters, had themselves to thank for its 
severity. / 

" I cannot foresee any other remedy/' he says, " but that most of 
those university youngsters must fall to the parish, and become a 
town charge, until they be of spiritual age. For philosophy is a very 
idle thing when one is cold ; and a small system of divinity (though 
it be Wollebius himself) is not sufficient when one is hungry. 
What, then, shall we do with them, and where shall we dispose of 
them, until they come to an holy ripeness ? May we venture them 
into the desk to read service ? That cannot be, because not capable; 
besides, the tempting pulpit usually stands too near. Or, shall we 
trust them in some good gentlemen's houses, there to perform holy 
things? With all my heart; so that they may not be called down 
from their studies to say grace to every health ; that they may have 
a little better wages than the cook or butler ; as also that there be 
a groom in the house, besides the chaplain (for sometimes, to the 
ten pounds a year, they crowd the looking after a couple of geld- 
ings) ; and that he may not be sent from table picking his teeth, 
and sighing with his hat under his arm, whilst the knight and my 
lady eat up the tarts and chickens. It may be also convenient if 
he were suffered to speak now and then in the parlour, besides at 
grace and prayer-time ; and that my cousin Abigail and he sit not 
too near one another at meals, nor be presented together to the 
little vicarage. All this, Sir, must be thought of; for in good ear- 
nest, a person at all thoughtful of himself and conscience, had much 
better choose to live with nothing but beans and pease-pottage 
(so that he may have the command of his thoughts and time), than 
to have his second and third courses, and to obey the unreasonable 
humours of some families. 

" He, therefore, that foresees that he is not likely to have the 
advantage of a continued education, had much better commit him- 
self to an approved of cobler or tinker, wherein he may be duly 
respected according to his office and condition of life, than to be 
only a disesteemed pettifogger or emperick in divinity." Speaking 



10 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

of language, the Doctor adds, "We know, the language that the 
very learned part of this nation must trust to live by, unless it 
be to make a bond or prescribe a purge (which possibly may not 
oblige or work so well in any other language as Latin), is the 
English. 

" As for divinity, in this place I shall say no more, but that those 
usually that have been rope-dancers in the schools, oft-times prove 
jack -puddings in the pulpit. 

"The world is now, especially in discourse, for one language ; and 
he that has somewhat in his mind of Greek or Latin, is requested 
nowadays to be civil, and translate it into English for the benefit 
of the company. And he that has made it his whole business to 
accomplish himself for the applause of a company of boys, school- 
masters, and the easiest of country divines, and has been shouldered 
out of the Cockpit for his wit, when he comes into the world 
is the most likely person to be kicked out of company for his 
pedantry, and overweening opinion of himself. 

"Amongst the first things that seem to be useless may be 
reckoned the high tossing and swaggering preaching, either mount- 
ingly eloquent, or profoundly learned. For there be a sort of 
divines who, if they do but happen of an unlucky hard word all 
the week, they think themselves not careful of their flock if they 
lay it not up till Sunday, and bestow it amongst them in their 
next preachment. Or if they light upon some difficult and obscure 
notion, which their curiosity inclines them to be better acquainted 
with, how useless soever, nothing so frequent as for them, for a 
month or two months together, to tear and tumble this doctrine ; 
and the poor people once a week shall coine to gaze upon them by 
the hour, until they preach themselves, as they think, into a right 
understanding. 

"If the minister's words be such as the constable uses, his 
matter plain and practical to such as come to the common market, 
he may pass possibly for an honest well-meaning man, but by no 
means for any scholar ; whereas, if he springs forth now and then 
in high raptures towards the uppermost heavens, dashing here and 
there an all -confounding word ; if he soars aloft in unintelligible 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 11 

huffs, preaches points deep and mystical, and delivers them as dark 
and phantastical : this is the way, say they, of being accounted a 
most able and learned instructor. 

"This learned way of talking, though for the most part it is 
done merely out of ostentation, yet sometimes (which makes not 
the case much better) it is done in compliment and civility to the 
all- wise patron, or all-understanding justice of the peace in the 
parish ; who, by the common farmers of the town, must be thought 
to understand the most intricate notions, and the most difficult 
languages. 

" I certainly know several of that disposition, who, if they chance 
to have a man of any learning or understanding, more than the 
rest in the parish, preach wholly at him, and level most of their 
discourse at his supposed capacity, and the rest of the good people 
shall have only a handsome gaze or view of the parson. As if 
plain words, useful and intelligible instructions, were not as good 
for an esquire, or one that is in commission from the king, as for 
him that holds the plough or mends hedges. 

" To omit future reward — was it not always esteemed of old, 
that correcting evil practices, reducing people who lived amiss, was 
much better than making a high rant about a shuttlecock, and 
talking tara-tantaro about a feather ? 

" Metaphors, though very apt and allowable, are intelligible but 
to some sorts of men, of this or that kind of life, of this or that 
profession. For example, perhaps one gentleman's metaphorical 
knack of preaching comes of the sea, and then we shall hear of 
nothing but starboard and larboard, of stems, sterns, and fore- 
castles, and such-like saU-water language : so that one had need 
take a voyage to Smyrna or Aleppo, and very warily attend to all 
the sailor's terms, before I shall in the least understand my 
teacher. Now, although such a sermon may possibly do some good 
in a coast town, yet upward into the country, in an inland parish, 
it will do no more than Syriack or Arabick. Anc/tker he falls a 
fighting with his text, and makes a pitched battle of it, dividing it 
into the right ruing and left wing, then he rears it, flanks it, in- 
trenches it, storms it ; then he musters all again, to see what word 



12 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

was lost or lamed in the skirmish ; and so, falling on again with 
fresh valour, he fights backward and forward, charges through and 
through, routs, kills, takes, and then, gentlemen — as you were, 
or, as the modern serjeant would say, ' When I say, as you were, be 
you as you was.' 

' ' Now, to such of his parish as have been in the late wars, this 
is not very formidable ; for they do but suppose themselves at 
Marston Moor, Naseby, and Edgehill ; and they are not much scared 
at his doctrine. But as for others, who have not had such fighting 
opportunities, it is very lamentable to consider how shivering they 
sit without understanding, till the battle is over. 

" As some are very high and learned in their attempts, so others 
there be who are of somewhat too mean and dirty imaginations. 
Such was he who goes by the name of Parson Slip-stocking : who, 
preaching about the grace and assistance of God, and that of 
ourselves we are able to do nothing, advised his beloved to take 
him in this plain similitude : — A father calls his child to him, 
saying, Child, pull off this stocking. The child, mightily joyful, that 
it should pull off father's stocking, takes hold of the stocking, and 
tugs, and pulls, and sweats, but to no purpose ; for stocking stirs 
not, for it is but a child that pulls. Then the father bids the child 
to rest a little, and try again ; so then the child sets on again, tugs 
again, and pulls again, and sweats again, but no stocking comes; 
for child is but a child still. Then, at last, the father, taking pity 
upon his child, puts his hand behind, and slips down the stocking, 
and off comes the stocking. Then how does the child rejoice ! for 
child hath pulled off father's stocking. Alas, poor child ! it was 
not child's strength, it was not child's sweating, that got off the 
stocking ; but it was the father's hand behind that slipped down the 
stocking. Even so 

"Not much unlike to this was he, that, preaching about the 
sacrament and faith, makes Christ a shopkeeper, telling you, that 
Christ is a treasury of all wares and commodities. And therefore, 
opening his wide throat, cries aloud, Good people, what do you 
lack? What do you buy? Will you buy my balm of Gilead, any 
eye-salve, any myrrh, aloes, or cassia ? Shall I fit you with a robe 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 13 

of righteousness, or with a white garment ? See here f what is it 
you want ? Here } s a very choice armory : shall I show you an 
helmet of salvation ; a shield, or a breastplate of faith ? Or will 
you please to walk in, and see some precious stones? — a jasper, a 
saphyre, or a chalcedonit ? Speak ! What will you buy ? 

11 Now, for my part, I must needs say, and I much fancy I speak 
the mind of thousands, that it had been much better for such an 
impudent and ridiculous bawler as this to have been condemned 
to have cried oysters or brooms, than to discredit after this unsanc- 
tified rate, his profession and our religion. 

" One gets to his text thus : — As Solomon went up sice steps to 
come to the great throne of ivory, so must I ascend six degrees to 
come to the high top meaning of my text. Another, thus : — As 
Deborah arose and went along with Barak to Kedesh ; so if you 
will go along with him, and call in at the third verse of this chapter, 
he will shew you the meaning of his text. 

" Another, he fancies his text to be extraordinarily like an orchard 
of pomgranates ; or like St. Matthew sitting at the receipt of 
custom ; or like the dove that Noah sent out of the ark. I believe 
there are above forty places of scripture that have been like Rachel 
and Leah ; and there is one in Genesis, as I well remember, that is 
like a pair of compasses stradling ; and, if I be not much mistaken, 
there is one somewhere else, that is like a man going — to Jericho. 

" Now, Sir, having thus made the way to the text as smooth and 
plain as anything, with a preface, perhaps, from Adam — though his 
business lie at the other end of the Bible, — in the next place, he 
comes to divide the text, 

Hie labor, hoc opus. 

Per varios casus, pe tot discrimina rerum. 

Silvestrem tenui 

Now, off comes the gloves; and, the hands being well chafed, he 
shrinks up his shoulders, and stretches forth himself as if he were 
going to cleave a bullock's head, or rive the body of an oak. But 
we must observe, that there is a great difference of texts. For all 
texts come not asunder alike ; for sometimes the words naturally 



14 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

fall asunder ; sometimes they drop asunder ; sometimes they melt ; 
sometimes they untwist ; and there be some words so willing to be 
parted, that they divide themselves, to the great ease and rejoicing 
of the minister. But, if they will not easily come in pieces, then 
he falls to hacking and hewing, as if he would make all fly into 
shivers. The truth of it is, I have known, now and then, some 
knotty texts, that have been divided seven or eight times over, 
before they could make them split handsomely, according to their 
mind. But the luckiest that I have met withal, both for wit and 
keeping the letter, is upon those words of St. Matthew xii. 43, 
44, 45 : — When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh 
through dry places, seeking rest, and finding none. Then he saith: — 
/ will return, §*c. In which words all these strange things were 
found out. First there was a captain and a castle. Do you see, 
Sir — the same letter ? Then there was an ingress and egress ; and 
a regress or re-ingress. Then there was unroosting and unresting. 
Then there was number and name ; manner and measure ; trouble 
and trial ; resolution and revolution ; assaults and assassinations ; 
voidness and vacuity. This was done at the same time, by the 
same man. But to confess the truth of it, 'twas a good long text, 
and so he had great advantage. 

" But, for a short text, that certainly was the greatest break that 
ever was, which was occasioned from those words of St. Luke xxiii. 
28: — Weep not for me, weep for yourselves ; or, as some read it, 
but weep for yourselves. It is a plain case, Sir, here are but eight 
words; and the business was so cunningly ordered, that there 
sprung out eight parts. Here are, says the Doctor, eight words 
and eight parts : — 1. Weep not; 2. But weep; 3. Weep not, but 
weep ; 4. Weep for me ; 5. For yourselves ; 6. For me, for your- 
selves ; 7. Weep not for me; 8. But weep for yourselves. That is 
to say — North, north by east; north-north-east; north-east by 
north; north-east, north-east by east; east, north-east; east by 

north ; east. Now, it seems not very easy to determine which 

has obliged the world — he that found out the compass, or he that 
divided the forementioned text. I suppose the cracks will go gene- 
rally upon the Doctor's side, by reason what he did was done by 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 15 

undoubted art, and absolute industry; but as for the other, the 
common report is, that it was found out by mere foolish fortune. 
Well, let it go how it will, questionless they will be both famous in 
their way, and honourably mentioned to posterity. 

"Neither ought he to be altogether slighted who, taking that 
of Gen. xlviii. 2, for his text, viz. — And one told Jacob, and said, 
Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee, presently perceived, 
and made it out to the people, that his text was a spiritual dial. 
For, says he, here be in my text twelve words which do plainly 
represent the twelve hours. Twelve words :- — And one told Jacob, 
and said, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee. For it is not 
said, Behold Jacob or behold Joseph ; but it is, and one told Jacob, 
and said, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee. That is to say, 
behold And, behold one, behold told, behold Jocob, again behold 
and, behold said {and also) behold Behold, &c, which is the reason 
that the word behold is placed in the middle of the other twelve 
words, indifferently pointing to each word. 

"Now, as it needs must be one of the clock before it can be two or 
three, so I shall handle the word And, the first word in the text, 
before I meddle with the following. And one told Jacob. This 
word And is but a particle, and a small one ; but small things 
are not to be despised. St. Matt, xviii. 10 : — Take heed that you 
despise not one of these little ones. For this And is as the tacks 
and loops amongst the curtains of the tabernacle. The tacks put 
into the loops did couple the curtains of the tent, and sew the tent 
together. So this particle And being put into the loops of the words 
immediately before the text, does couple the text to the foregoing 
verse, and sews them close together. 

" Another takes that of Isa. xli. 14, 15 : — Fear not, thou worm 
Jacob, &c, thou shalt thresh the mountains. Whence he observes 
that the worm Jacob was a threshing worm. 

"Now, Sir, if you be for a very short and witty discovery, let it 
be upon that of St. Matt. vi. 27 : — Which of you by taking thought 
can add one cubit more unto his stature ? The discovery is this : — 
That whilst the disciples were taking thought for a cubit, Christ 
takes them down a cubit lower. Notable, also, are two discoveries 



16 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

made upon St. Matt. viii. 1 : — When he came down from the moun- 
tain, great multitudes followed him. 1. That Christ went down as 
well as went up when he came down from the mountain; 2. That the 
multitude did not go hail fellow met with him, nor before him : for 
great multitudes followed him. But I shall end all with that very 
politick one that he makes upon St. Matt. xii. 47 : — Then one said 
unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, 
desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said, Wlio is 
my mother ? and who are my brethren ? I discover now, says he, 
that Jesus is upon business. Lastly, suppose that you were not fully 
satisfied that pluralities were lawful or convenient, may I be so 
bold, Sir, I pray — what text would you choose to preach upon 
against non-residents ? Certainly, nothing ever was better picked 
than that of St. Matt. i. 2 : — Abraham begat Isaac. A clear place 
against non-residents. For had Abraham not resided, but discon- 
tinued from Sarah his wife, he could never have begot Isaac/ 3 

Dr. Eachard goes so far as to state that the above style of 
preaching was common among the inferior clergy of the Church of 
England in the reign of Charles II., and he declares that a great 
scholar of our nation has affirmed — u That such preaching as is 
usual, is a hindrance of salvation, rather than the means to it. And 
what he intends by usual, I shall not here go about to explain." 

There can be no doubt but the common indiscriminate practice 
of giving titles for orders was a very great evil of the time, and al- 
lowed the entrance into the church of a class of men "totally unfit 
in mind, and not ever likely to be worth two groats in body." 
This was a crying evil of the day, and Dr. Eachard faithfully 
deals with it as such. He seriously laments it, as we shall pre- 
sently see. 

"Where the ministry is pinched, as to the tolerable conveniences 
of this life, the chief of his care and time must be spent, not in 
an impertinent considering what texts of scripture will be most 
useful for his parish, what instructions most seasonable, and what 
authors best to be consulted; but the chief of his thoughts, and 
his main business, must be to study how to live that week? 
WJiere he shall have bread for his family ? Whose sow has lately 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 17 

pigged? Whence will come the next rejoicing goose, or the next 
cheerful basket of apples ? How far to Lammas or Offerings ? 
When shall we have another christening and cakes, and who is 
likely to marry or die ? These are very seasonable considerations, 
and worthy of a man's thoughts. For a family can't be main- 
tained by texts and contexts ; and the child that lies crying in the 
cradle will not be satisfied without a little milk, and perhaps sugar, 
though there be a small German system in the house. 

" But suppose he does get into a little hole over the oven, with 
a lock to it, calPd his study, towards the latter end of the week — 
you must know, Sir, there are very few texts of scripture that can 
be divided, at soonest, before Friday night ; and some there be that 
will never be divided but upon Sunday morning, and that not very 
early, but either a little before they go, or in going to church ; — 
I say, suppose the gentleman gets thus into his study : one may 
very near guess what is his first thought when he comes there, viz., 
that the last kilderkin of drink is near departed ; and that he has 
but one poor single groat in the house, and there 's judgment and 
execution ready to come out against it for milk and eggs. Now, 
Sir, can any man think that one thus racked and tortured can be 
seriously intent half an hour to contrive any thing that might be of 
real advantage to his people? Besides, perhaps that week he has 
met with some dismal crossings and undoing misfortunes. There 
was a scurvy-conditioned mole that broke into his pasture and 
ploughed up the best part of his glebe ; and a little after that came 
a couple of spiteful, ill-favoured cows, and trampled down the little 
remaining grass; another day, having but four chickens, sweep 
comes the kite, and carries away the fattest and hopefullest of all 
the brood. Then, after all this, came the jackdaws and starlings 
(idle birds that they are!), and they scattered and carried away 
from his thin-thatched house, forty or fifty of the best straws ; and 
to make him completely unhappy, after all these afflictions, another 
day that he had a pair of breeches on, coming over a perverse stile, 
he suffered very much in carelessly lifting over his leg. Now, what 
parish can be so inconsiderate and unreasonable, as to look for any 
thing from one whose fancy is thus checked, and whose under- 

2 



18 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

standing is thus ruffled and disordered. They may as soon expect 
comfort and consolation from him that lies racked with the gout 
and stone, as from a divine thus broken and shattered in his 
fortunes. 

" But we '11 grant that he meets not with any of these such fright- 
ful disasters, but that he goes into his study with a mind as calm 
as the evening. For all that, upon Sunday we must be content 
even with what God shall please to send us. For, as for books, he 
is (for want of money) so moderately furnished, that, except it be a 
small Geneva Bible, so small, as it will not be desired to lie open of 
itself, together with a certain Concordance thereunto belonging; 
as also a book for all kinds of Latin sentences, called Polyanthea, 
with some Exposition npon the Catechism (a portion of which is 
to be got by heart, and to be put off for his own), and perhaps 
Mr. Caryl upon Pineda, Mr. Dod upon the Commandments, and 
Mr. Clark's Lives of Famous Men, both in church and state, such 
as Mr. Carter, of Norwich, that uses to eat such abundance of 
pudding; besides, I say, these, there is scarce any thing to be found 
but a budget of old stitched sermons, hung up behind the door, 
with a few broken girths, two or three yards of whipcord, and 
perhaps a saw and a hammer, to prevent dilapidations. Now, what 
may not a divine do, though but of ordinary parts and unhappy 
education, with such learned helps and assistances as these? No 
vice surely durst stand before him, and heresie affront him. 

" But cannot a clergyman chuse rather to lie upon feathers than 
an hurdle, but he must be idle, soft, and effeminate ? May he not 
desire wholesome food and fresh drink, unless he be a cheat, a 
hypocrite, and an impostor ? and must he needs be void of grace, 
though he has a shilling in his purse after the rates be crossed? and 
full of pride and vanity, though his house stands not upon crutches, 
and though his chimney is to be seen a foot above the thatch ? Oh, 
how prettily and temperately may half a score children be main- 
tained with almost twenty pounds per annum ! What a handsome 
shift a poor, ingenious, and frugal divine will make, to take it by 
turns, and wear a cassock one year, and a pair of breeches another ? 
What a becoming thing is it for him that serves at the altar to fill 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 19 

the dungcart in dry weather, and to heat the oven and pull hemp 
in wet ? And what a pleasant sight is it to see the man of God 
fetching up his single melancholy cow, from a small bit of land that 
is scarce to be found without a guide ? or to be seated upon a soft 
and well-grinded pouch of meal ? or to be planted upon a pannier, 
with a pair of geese or turkeys bobbing out their heads from under 
his canonical coat, as you cannot but remember the man, Sir, that 
was thus accomplished ? or to find him raving about the yards, or 
keeping his chamber close, because the duck lately miscarried of 
an egg, or that the never- failing hen has unhappily forsaken her 
wonted nest ? 

" That constitution of our church was a most prudent design, that 
says, that all who are ordained shall be ordained to somewhat ; not 
ordained at random to preach in general to the whole world, as they 
travel up and down the road, but to this or that particular parish. 
And no question the reason was to prevent spiritual pedling and 
gadding up and down the country with a bag of trifling and insig- 
nificant sermons, inquiring who will buy any doctrine ? so that no 
more might be received into holy orders than the church had pro- 
vided for. But so very little is this regarded,, that if a young 
divinity intender has but got a sermon of his own or of his father's, 
although he knows not where to get a meal's meat, or one penny of 
money by his preaching, yet he gets a qualification from some bene- 
ficed man or other, who perhaps is no more able to keep a curate 
than I am to keep ten footboys, and so he is made a preacher ; and 
upon this account I have known an ordinary divine, whose living 
would but just keep himself and his family from melancholy and 
despair, shroud under his protection as many curates as the best 
nobleman in the land has chaplains. 

" Now, many such as these go into orders against the sky falls, 
foreseeing no more likelihood of any preferment coming to them 
than you or I do of being secretaries of state. Now, so often as 
any such as these, for want of maintenance, are put to any unworthy 
and disgraceful shifts, this reflects disparagement upon all that 
order of holy men. 

" I am almost confident, that since the Reformation nothing has 

2* 



20 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

more hindred people from a just estimation of a Form of Prayer 
and our holy Liturgy, than employing a company of boys or old 
illiterate mumblers to read the service. And I do verily believe, 
that at this very day, especially in cities and corporations (which 
make up the third part of our nation), there is nothing that does 
more keep back some dissatisfied people from church till service be 
over, than that it is read by some ten or twelve pound man, with 
whose parts and education they are so well acquainted, as to have 
reason to know, that he has but just skill enough to read the 
lessons with twice conning over. And though the office of the 
reader be only to read word for word, and neither to invent and 
expound, yet people love he should be a person of such worth and 
knowledge as it may be supposed he understands what he reads. 
And although for some it were too burthensome a task to read the 
service twice a day, and preach as often, yet certainly it were much 
better if the people had but one sermon in a fortnight or month, 
so the service was performed by a knowing and valuable person, 
than to run an unlearned rout of contemptible people into holy 
orders, on purpose only to say the prayers of the church, who per- 
haps shall understand very little more than a hollow pipe made of 
tin or wainscot. 

"The next thing that does much heighten the misery of our 
church as to the poverty of it, is the gentry's designing not only 
the weak, the lame, and usually the most ill-favoured of their chil- 
dren, for the office of the ministry, but also such as they intend to 
settle nothing upon for their subsistence ; leaving them wholly to 
the bare hopes of church preferment. For, as they think, let the 
thing look how it will, it is good enough for the church ; and that 
if it had but limbs enough to climb the pulpit, and eyes enough to 
find the day of the month, it will serve well enough to preach and 
read service. So, likewise, they think they have obliged the clergy 
very much, if they please to bestow two or three years' education 
upon a younger son at the university, and then commend him to 
the grace of God and the favour of the church, without one penny 
of money, or inch of land. You must not think that he will spoil 
his eldest son's estate, or hazard the lessening the credit of the 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



%\ 



family, to do that which may tend any way to the reputation and 
honour of the clergy. And thus it comes to pass that you may 
commonly ride ten miles, and scarce meet with a divine that is worth 
above two spoons and a pepper-box besides his living and spiritual 
preferments. For, as for the land, that goes sweeping away with 
the eldest son, for the immortality of the family ; and as for the 
money, that is usually employed for to bind out and set up other 
children. 

ci So that if it be enquired by any one, how comes it to pass that 
we have so many in holy orders that understand so little, and that 
are able to do so little service in the church ? — if we would answer 
plainly and truly, we may say, because they are good for nothing 
else. For shall we think that any man that is not cursed to use- 
lessness, poverty, and misery, will be content with twenty or thirty 
pounds a year? For, though in the bulk it looks at first like a 
bountiful estate, yet, if we think of it a little better, we shall find 
that an ordinary bricklayer or carpenter, that earns constantly but 
his two shillings a day, has clearly a better revenue^ and has certainly 
the command of more money." 

The work from which these extracts are made was written anony- 
mously, and with much secrecy ; and the author had allotted to him 
as many professions and employments as there are companies in the 
city of London, and as the Grand Seignior had his titles of honour; 
to say nothing of " rogue, raskal, dog, and thief (which may be taken 
by way of endearment, as well as out of prejudice or offence) ; mali- 
cious rogue, ill-natured raskal, lazy dog, and spiteful thief." Setting 
aside all these, they travelled him quite through the map ; for he was 
" barbarian, Indian, Turk, and Jew ; and, besides all this, business 
went on at home all the while; for there he was rebel, tray tor, Scot, 
Sadducee, and Socinian." This I take from the preface of the 
second part, in answer to Sir Roger 1/ Estrange, the hired writer 
and, perhaps, slang actor of that day. No doubt but Sir Roger 
would dine with great people on this event, and perhaps receive 
his instructions over turtle and venison, and be instructed in the 
path of malice and untruth, how he was to make his attack, and 
how be paid for making it. The bar ! — was he at the bar? — only at 



22 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

the bar, and then ! why, Jeffreys earned the bread of iniquity, and 
eat it \ and on the flight from Rochester of his lord and master, 
James, he was found by accident, and arrested by a London street 
mob, dressed as a tramp sailor ! He was committed to Newgate, 
or the Tower, by the Lord Mayor of London, where he ended 
his career in ten days or a fortnight by drinking brandy. Lord 
Chancellor Jeffreys was a slang actor, brought upon the stage by 
royalty to stifle truth. But suppose the stiff-necked advocate of 
the sacred exclusiveness of six-headed aristocracy could not very 
well see, elevated to the judicial bench, as the slanderous judge, 
his venison-chewing, soup-drinking companion — what then ? His- 
toriographer royal, with a something promised from some other 
purse than his own ? — will that do ? — or poet-laureate on the first 
vacancy, with a pension fully written and acknowledged ; and no 
trick at stealing a march upon a confiding public, by a secret- 
service payment for work done ? Well ! pay or no pay, write, 
slander, cut down truth; and, if nothing better can be found, 
perhaps my Lord Hesitation of Scrupulous Manor may find a 
stool and desk at the Admiralty, with £100 per annum; and, if 
that can't be done, there is the situation of Hal at Windsor Castle, 
where the young scions of royalty may be shown how truth and 
justice may be slandered down by dishonesty. 

So much for hired writers and slang actors : they do their work, 
and receive their reward. Roger L'Estrange, the great hired scribe 
of the High-Church party of James II /s reign, was caught, in the 
times of the Civil War, at Lynne, in Norfolk, acting as a spy of 
the Cavaliers, for which he was tried, and sentenced to be hanged in 
Smithfield by the neck till he should be dead. He was not hanged, 
but kept a prisoner in Newgate for several years, where he learnt 
the manners and language of a jail, as appears so plentifully in his 
Observators, Rye-House plot, and other destable libels against the 
Protestant religion and liberty ; which Newgate finish, or rubbing- 
up in education, made him so great an ornament to the cause he 
espoused — that of the Cavaliers, or High-flyers of the Church of 
England. 

In the year 1678, this same man was licensed by the Govern- 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 23 

ment of Charles II, to break open houses and closets, on suspi- 
cion only of any good liberty-in-religion-advocating pamphlets — ■ 
in short, any pamphlets advocating the rights of the vitality of 
Protestantism. 

This convicted spy, condemned to be hanged, the well-paid tool 
of the High-Church party — a party, according to Bishop Burnet, 
whose stupidity and ignorance as pulpiteers could only be equalled 
by their malice and rage — was the execrable corrupter of his times. 
It was, indeed, through the penny papers, published by this mis- 
creant, that the clergy of his party, with the vilest part of the 
people, were corrupted; and the corruption from this man's pen 
gave to his party the name of Tories, a name given to the wildest of 
the ivild Irish. 

The hireling I/Estrange had many opponents in pamphlet- 
writing, among whom stood the patriot M.P. for Hull, who, 
when he wrote on behalf of liberty, had to turn printer too ; for 
such was the tyranny of the times — such was arbitrary power in 
high places, that writers, printers, and publishers, on the side of the 
country, were put down and silenced by imprisonments; at least 
one, Francis Smith, was thrown into Newgate ; while I/Estrange . 
was suffered to insult the religious and wise part of the nation, to 
vilify the Reformation and the free constitution of England, not 
only with impunity, but with reward ; though there was really no 
more wit than truth in his writing. He was a sort of Gathercole 
in his day, having the same class of readers, and the same class of 
support. As for wit, Andrew Marvel was far his superior, though 
he had not had the benefit of his Newgate training. De Foe was 
his master as a writer, and so was Dr. John Eachard, the author of 
the book so freely quoted above, which I/Estrange answered in a 
book condemned to the cheesemonger's weighed paper, whither my 
copy is traced by a note on the back. 

Oldmixon, in his History of England, writing on the supposed 
murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, says of Roger L/Estrange, 
who ridiculed the idea of that murder and the Popish Plot too, " I 
will take the liberty with 1/ Estrange which his character justifies. 
There 's no decency toward a villain that had a hundred times 



24 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

deserved the gallows, which he was condemned to thirty years 

before." The Lord L , in the House of Peers, gives a lively 

picture of this scribbler, who, without the least knowledge of its 
strength, purity, and elegance of style, was cried up, at our two 
famous universities, as a master of the English tongue. He pub- 
lished a heap of libels and lampoons to rail away the Popish Plot 
and Sir Edmundbury Godfrey's murder, in language which would 
be a shame to our markets ; and his lordship takes this notice 
of him: — 

"I would not have so much as a Popish man or Popish woman to 
remain here ; not so much as a Popish dog or a Popish bitch, nor 
so much as a Popish cat that should pur or mew about the King. 
We are in a labyrinth of evils, and must carefully endeavour to get 
out of them ; and the greatest dangers of all amongst us, are con- 
cerning Protestants, who, notwithstanding the many evidences of 
the plot, have been industrious to revile the King's witnesses ; and 
such an one is Ptoger L'Estrange, who now disappears, being one 
of the greatest villains upon earth — a rogue beyond my skill to 
delineate, who has been the bugbear of the Protestant religion, 
and traduced the King and the King's evidences by his notorious 
scribbling writings, and has endeavoured, as much as in him lay, 
to eclipse the glory of the English nation. He is a dangerous rank 
Papist, proved by good and substantial evidence ; for which, since 
he has walked under another disguise, he deserves of all men to be 
hanged, and I believe I shall live to see that be his fate. He has 
scandalized several of the nobility, and detracted from the rights of 
his Majesty's great council the Parliament. He is now fled from 
justice, by which he confesses the charge against him, and that 
shews him to be guilty." This wretched felon was made a justice 
of the peace to prosecute Protestant dissenters with his power as 
well as with his pen. He was afterwards dubbed one of King 
James's House of Commons, whom Echard the historian so highly 
honours for their great fortunes and virtues. From his invectives 
does that historian take his ribaldry against the discovery of the 
Popish Plot, as will be observed in the sequel. 

Of Roger L'Estrange, who was knighted by Charles II. for 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 25 

his eminent services as a slanderous writer and a propper-up of 
fraud against truth, I shall say no more ; indeed I should not have 
dwelt upon his merits so long, had I not been desirous to show what 
championship High-Church presumption, ignorance, poverty, and 
dishonesty, had to boast of. Sir Roger I/Estrange, Knt., was the 
champion of that party. 

From Roger L'Estrange, and his vulgar and dishonest advocacy, 
let us turn to De Foe, the object of this book. He now appears 
embarked in trade, and located in Freeman's Court, Cornhill, in 
1685, at which occupation he continued till 1695, a period of ten 
years. We have seen that he was born in 1661, and that at fourteen 
years of age he went to Mr. Morton's academy, and remained there 
five years, which brings us to 1680, when he disappears from the 
stage for five years. There are thus five years of his life lost to the 
public, in which nothing is known of him, except that he wrote his 
Speculum Crape-gownorum in 1682. What are we to make of this, 
but that he, the son of James Foe, butcher, was placed apprentice 
for five years with some hosier ? perhaps called Norton, for he had a 
son Norton, afterwards a prose writer, and a dull one; the said 
Norton Foe not possessing any of the quickness of his father as an 
English writer. 

The Monmouth invasion took place in the year 1685, the year 
I>e Foe commenced business; therefore we cannot suppose that 
his absence had anything to do with that, if we are to suppose, 
along with others, his biographers, that he really was there as a 
fighter. 

It is very evident that Dr. Eachard was a writer with whom 
Daniel De Foe was very intimate; for the above work abounds 
with that style of wit which became, very early in life, his model 
as a writer. His first work, Speculum Crape-gownorum, was, no 
doubt, borrowed from Dr. Eachard' s work altogether. This was 
in 1682; but in 1704, or twelve years later, De Foe wrote his 
Consolidator, or Journey to the Moon; and this work also was bor- 
rowed from Dr. Eachard's work above quoted. Dr. Eachard was, 
in my opinion, godfather to Daniel De Foe as a writer, as Daniel 
De Foe was godfather to Benjamin Franklin, Richardson, and others ; 



26 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

even Swift, as we have stated, borrowing his idea of Gulliver's Travels 
from his Consolidator . 

Charles II. dying on February 6th, 1685, in the fifty-fourth year 
of his age and the twenty-fifth of his reign, his brother, James II., 
ascended the throne, to the great dismay of all thinking people, 
and to the joy of another class, who poured in the most fulsome 
addresses, offering to the new sovereign life and fortune ; and the 
drum-ecclesiastic was sounded in his praise, because the church 
was to be supported or protected; for these two words, in 1685, 
were nearly synonymous, inasmuch as supported meant protected 
against something — Dissent. 

James's arbitrary proceedings were so distasteful to the nation, 
that they gave confidence to James Duke of Monmouth, the natural 
son of Charles II., and induced him to land at Lyme, in Dorsetshire, 
in the summer of 1685, with eighty persons (chiefly soldiers of for- 
tune and poor Scotch noblemen), for the invasion of Great Britain 
and Ireland. 

The Duke of Monmouth was a Protestant, and a jolly, good- 
humoured fellow, who made himself as acceptable to the thoughtless 
class of the community as possible, by attending hunting meetings 
and horse-matches ; and by these arts of seeking applause, brought 
thousands of the people together at those gatherings to see him. 
This man De Foe was very partial to, and he supported his claims 
to the crown, believing in all truth that Charles II. was really 
married to Lucy Walters, his mother. De Foe had seen him — 
a tall, heavy, yet handsome man — ride for a plate at Aylesbury 
races; he frequently rode his own horse at these meetings, and 
sometimes won the race. This pandering to vulgar popularity at 
coursing, hunting, or racing matches, was encouraged by the Earl of 
Shaftesbury, his friend and supporter; and this injudicious sup- 
port was the real cause of the misfortunes which befel this noble 
and talented statesman. Lord Shaftesbury possessed an ambition 
which, pushed forward to premature action, ended in disaster : he 
was an unstable, clever man, and a dangerous adviser. This ill- 
counselled invasion, supported neither by national sympathy, or- 
ganization, arms, men, nor money, totally and at once failed, as 



LIFE OF DE FOE, 



27 



it must of necessity fail : the poor duke was taken prisoner, and 
carried to London, and beheaded upon Tower Hill, on July 15th, 
1685. It is not necessary to dwell upon this rash adventure; but 
when De Foe affirms that he was there as a fighter, what must 
I say? 

De Foe wrote Speculum Crape-gownorum three years before this 
rebellion ; and he must have been thoroughly known to the govern- 
ment of James II., and watched and marked out for destruction. De 
Foe was not there, though he says he was ; but poor Tutchin, his 
political contemporary and fellow-labourer, was there, and was taken 
prisoner, and tried by Judge Jeffreys, at Dorchester; and Jeffreys 
told him the time when he went to Holland, with whom he lodged 
when there, the manner of his coming to this country, and the 
fictitious name he went by at the time, as well as his connection 
with certain gentlemen in Hampshire, who raised some men at 
Lymington for the Duke of Monmouth. 

Poor Tutchin's sentence, for changing his name, was, " that he 
should remain in prison during the space of seven years ; that once 
every year he should be whipped through all the market towns in 
Dorsetshire ; that he should pay a fine of one hundred marks to the 
King, and find security for his good behaviour during life." 

When this sentence was pronounced in court, the ladies, of whom 
there were a great number present, all burst out a crying; but 
Jeffreys, turning towards them, said, " Ladies, if you did but know 
what a villain this is as well as I do, you would say this sentence 
is not half bad enough for him." The clerk of the arraigns also 
stood up in court, and said, " My lord, there are a great many 
market towns in this county ; the sentence reaches to a whipping 
about once a fortnight, and he 's a very young man." " Aye," 
says Jeffreys, " he *s a young man, but he 's an old rogue ; and all 
the interest in England shan't reverse the sentence I have passed 
upon him." 

" But certainly no devil incarnate could rage, nor no Billingsgate 
woman could scold, worse than this judge did at this young gentle- 
man whilst he was at the bar; he called him a thousand rogues 
and villains, told him that he was a rebel from Adam, that never 



28 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

any of his family had the least loyalty ; and, said he, I understand 
you are a wit and poet; pray, Sir, let you aud I cap verses. Mr. 
Tutchin smiled in his face and told him, he knew upon what 
ground he stood, and when he was overmatched." Tutchin refused 
to ask pardon of his inhuman judge, but addressed his Majesty as 
follows : — 

"To the King's Majesty. 

" The humble Petition of John Tutchin, of Lymington, in the 
county of Southampton, gentleman, now a prisoner in the 
County Gaol of Dorset, 
" Sheweth, 

" That your petitioner now lies in this prison under sentence of 
the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, to remain in the said prison during 
the space of seven years ; that once every year he shall be whipped 
through all the market towns in Dorsetshire ; that he shall pay a 
fine of one hundred marks to the King, and find security for his 
good behaviour during life. 

" That this sentence was passed upon your petitioner under pre- 
tence of his having changed his name ; and no matter of treason or 
rebellion being proved upon him. 

"That your petitioner has always demeaned himself according to 
his duty required by law, and that he is ready to venture his life in 
defence of a lawful King, that shall govern according to law, in pre- 
servation of the liberties of Englishmen. 

" That he humbly conceives the sentence passed upon him by the 
said Jeffreys is worse than death ; and, therefore, 

" Humbly prays your Majesty will be mercifully pleased to grant 
him the favour of being hanged with those of his fellow-prisoners 
that are condemned to die ; and 'till then your petitioner shall ever 
pray, &c. " John Tutchin." 

On this man, so circumstanced, the mean tool of Robert Harley, 
Alexander Pope, could write, 

And Tutchin, flagrant from the scourge, below. 
Here we have two men alike in their political views, principles, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 29 

and callings, as public writers; for both were champions of civil 
and religious liberty in the worst of times, and as champions they 
stood alone, or nearly so : the one named John Tutchin, of the 
Observator ; the other, Daniel De Foe, of the Review, and of every 
thing, from peace, free trade, union with Scotland, and the rights 
of conscience, down to magic and nights to the moon, almanac- 
making, &c. These two, ranged on the same side, against all the 
powers of earth, as writers, never could agree. Tutchin was 
quarrelsome and imperious, and always charging De Foe with being 
illiterate, and keeper of a hosier's shop ; to which De Foe would 
reply, that he would translate four languages with him or Tom 
Brown for twenty pounds. Perhaps De Foe might trench on John's 
especial ground, when he used to boast that he had been concerned 
in the Monmouth invasion : a pretension which John Tutchin 
might fairly call in question, for that was his especial field of 
honour. De Foe had no right to be robbing Tutchin of his laurels, 
for he had ground enough and to spare, if he had not been eaten up 
with vanity and ambition. Had he not been in Newgate twelve 
months, and had he not stood in the pillory at the Royal Exchange, 
and in Cheapside, and at Temple Bar ; had he not been advertised 
in the London Gazette by the Secretary of State, and fifty pounds 
offered for his apprehension, and his person described in that Hue 
and Cry ; and, as for his writings too, had he not had four of his 
productions at least burnt in Palace Yard, by the hands of the 
common hangman, by an express vote of the House of Commons ? 
What could the man want more? — why trench on John Tutchin? 
But Tutchin had been tried for high treason. Well : but if he 
had — was not De Foe confined in Newgate for several months, in 
1713, on a charge of high treason, and was he not set at liberty, 
without trial, by Queen Anne and her confidential friend and 
minister, Robert Harley ; and was not the warrant for his release 
signed by the Secretary of State Bolingbroke? They could not hang 
the man for doing their work : De Foe had been writing What if 
the Queen should die ? at the instigation of some one, and he was 
not to be hanged for it. When De Foe claimed the privilege of 
boasting that he had been concerned in the Monmouth invasion, he 



30 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

ought to have reflected that he wrote Speculum Crape-gownorum, one 
of the most offensive pamphlets to the highflyers of the Church of 
England that ever was written, only two years before this invasion. 
There is no doubt but Daniel De Foe would be known well to all 
the tools, police, or spies of James II., and his whereabouts would 
be strictly inquired after, during all the murdering by law of the 
eight hundred prisoners in Dorsetshire and Somersetshire, by Judge 
Jeffreys. De Foe was a great admirer of the Duke of Monmouth, 
and no doubt but he would both write and talk in his favour in all 
companies. De Foe was no keeper at home ; for he was a wit, and 
the life of all companies. It is highly probable that this Mon- 
mouth plot was, like a great many other plots, Roman Catholic or 
Presbyterian, got up by the King or his friends, during his un- 
bounded popularity in the nation, to free himself at once from his 
most dangerous because Protestant rival ; and with him some hun- 
dreds of individuals who would be his greatest tormentors when he 
set fairly to work to re-establish the Roman Catholic religion within 
these realms, by the forms of law — acts of Parliament. 

In the reign of James II., or in that of his brother, when he 
acted plot-master for that brother, many, very many innocent per- 
sons were murdered by law, either to gain a point in kingcraft, or 
to revenge the death of their father, Charles I. These two reigns 
forcibly remind us of the tremendous ground-swell which we always 
find to exist at sea for many hours after a storm. 

The storm of the execution of Charles I. produced a political 
ground-swell in the British dominions, which did not subside till 
the death of Queen Anne, in 1714, a period of sixty years; during 
which, one king had to run away, and two sovereigns were brought 
to an untimely grave by the contentions of parties in the state, and 
the flagrant want of principle of their ministers and the national 
delegates assembled in the House of Commons. 

Poor James II. appeared to have received certain high notions 
of the kingcraft science of his grandfather, James I. ; and he was 
always attempting to display this science in carrying on the affairs of 
his government. No monarch in Great Britain ever had the same 
opportunities freely given to him— nay, thrown after him, and even 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 31 

upon him — by his people; and yet he did not know how to use 
those advantages when made ready to his hands. Two millions 
a year were given to him by his Parliament for carrying out 
his government requirements; and the first step he took was to 
raise twenty thousand men on Hounslow Heath as a private army, 
which he took immediate steps to officer with Irish Papists, to the 
superseding of Protestant English officers; and the British regi- 
ments of the line were tampered with in every way, by the intro- 
duction of wild Irish Papists into the ranks, and also into the 
commissions. The church was handled in the same point-blank, 
peremptory way. His sense of kingcraft, his poor old grandfather's 
legacy, was his ruin. He ran his head against every interest, right, 
privilege, or prejudice in his dominions; and he did this at once, 
to make up for lost time, for he was getting old, and life is short. 
It was his design to make all his subjects Roman Catholics, and 
vassals of France ; and he intended to assist the French King to 
overturn the Protestant liberties of Europe, beginning with Hol- 
land. At the very time of the Revolution, 1688, steps were being 
taken by James and Louis XIV. for the carrying out this measure, 
which was to be consummated by the old project of Richelieu and 
Mazarine, of uprooting all the Protestantism of Europe, and erecting 
in its place the dearly cherished project of the universal monarchy 
of Prance. This was the grand secret of the success of the glorious 
revolution of 1688 in England. William was forced upon his 
adventure by Holland, Sweden, Austria, and even the very Pope 
himself, who might appear to sacrifice the spiritual interests of his 
sovereignty for the sake of the temporalities of his Italian king- 
dom, threatened to be swallowed up by the all-grasping kingly gripe 
of the ambitious French monarch. The fourteen thousand Dutch 
soldiers, taken from the garrisons in Holland for William's security 
in England, were made up by a like force being lent to Holland by 
Sweden, for the security of Holland in the mean time. This shows 
the movement to have been European, and not personal on the part 
of the Prince of Orange. 

It should be stated, that Lord Danby, afterwards Duke of Leeds, 
was a main instrument in bringing about the glorious Revolution of 



32 LIFE OP DE FOE. 

1688, by turning match-maker between the Prince of Orange, the 
King's nephew, and Mary, James's daughter, the young lady being 
only fifteen years of age ; and he managed affairs so adroitly, that 
the King was forced into the measure by his necessities and de- 
pendence on his Parliament. James, the father of the young lady, 
was commanded by his brother to submit to the match ; and when 
all was ready, the plot exploded, and the King had an intimation of 
two hours only, before the event was completed ; and poor James, 
the Duke of York and father of the bride, had only sixty minutes 
allowed him to give his consent, and reconcile himself to the loss of 
his daughter. Lord Danby ! immortal honours rest upon that hal- 
lowed name. The Duke of Leeds, as the representative of his great 
ancestor, must receive his reward — national respect and national 
gratitude to the name. This grand master-plot of a great states- 
man, saved this kingdom, perhaps, from unheard-of troubles, and 
even from loss of nationality. It was a grand move in state policy, 
made in favour of the Protestantism of Europe, against the pretensions 
of the French monarchy, in its aspirations after universal dominion. 
" The French King well knew the blow he had sustained, and 
betrayed his resentment to Mountague, the English ambassador, 
when he said of the Duke of York, that he had given his daughter 
to the greatest enemy he had in the world. Upon the ambassador's 
return, the Lord Danby asked him how the King of France received 
the news ; he answered, As he would have done the loss of an army ; 
and spoke very hardly of the duke for not acquainting him with it. 
Lord Danby answered, He wronged him ; for he did not know of 
it an hour before it was published, and the King himself not above 
two hours. This was a master-piece in the earl, who, since he was 
Duke of Leeds, has declared in print, that he will not suffer that 
part of his service to be buried in oblivion — a part that would never 
be forgiven by the duke and the Romish party." All this I take 
verbatim from Mr. Lawrence Echard, the historian of the day, 
archdeacon of Stowe, and chaplain to the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury : a staid respectable authority, living and publishing at the 
time. Mind — not John Eachard, De Foe's pattern-card for wit and 
smart writing, even on things sacred. The two, John and Law- 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 33 

rence, were not related, for their names were spelt differently, for 
one was Eachard, and the other Echard. It is well to notice this 
difference, for these two men have frequently been confounded as 
the same individual, though two individuals could not be more 
dissimilar : the one eminent, no doubt, in his time, as a divine and 
a wit ; and the other equally illustrious, in his way, as a historian. 

On this same authority, that of Lawrence Echard, it may be 
stated, that on the 9th of September, 1688, the French Minister, 
D'Avaux, presented a memorial to the States General to the effect : 
— "That his master understood that their design was against 
England; and in that case he signified to them, that the ties of 
friendship and alliance between him and the King of Great 
Britain would oblige him not only to assist, but also to look upon 
the first act of hostility against him to be a manifest rupture of the 
peace, and a breach with the crown." The answer returned to 
England, on an address from that crown, was, " That they armed 
in imitation of his Britannick Majesty; and that they were long 
since convinced of the alliance into which he had entered with 
France, and which had been owned to them by the Count d'Avaux." 
There must have been an alliance between France and England 
when the French monarch offered to send over to England 40,000 
French troops to James' assistance; an offer which the Earl of 
Sunderland, the English Prime Minister, dared not accept. 

This offer being rejected, the French King offered to march 
these same troops into Holland, in order to prevent the Prince of 
Orange's descent upon England, which offer was rejected also. 
James knew well, that 14,000 Dutch Protestants, under the com- 
mand of his son-in-law the Prince of Orange, would be more safe 
guests in his Protestant dominions than 40,000 Papists under the 
King of France. 

All this time poor James was not inactive in fitting out his fleet, 
and giving out commissions for the augmenting his army, his chief 
reliance being on Lord Tyrconnel, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to 
whom he sent positive and immediate orders for whole regiments of 
Irish Papists — a class of troops on whom he chiefly relied— to be 
sent to England with the least possible delay ; the men who shortly 

3 



34 LIEE or DE F0E - 

afterwards, in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, when they were disbanded 
without payment of arrears of wages, threatened to put everything 
to fire and sword, and attained, through their great zeal for the 
Roman Catholic faith, and threatenings to all Protestants, the long- 
remembered appellation of James's Apostolical Dragoons. On the 
23rd of September the English ambassador at the Hague received 
direct information, officially from that court, as to the designs of 
the Prince of Orange, which he at once communicated to his master 
in England, with the intelligence also that several English lords and 
gentlemen had already crossed the sea, and lay privately in Holland, 
ready to accompany the Prince to England; these were Sidney, 
brother to the Earl of Leicester ; Sir Rt. Peyton, Sir Rowland Gwyn, 
Dr. Burnet, and others ; Dr. Burnet being chaplain to the Prince of 
Orange, friend, companion, and minister, and perhaps the chief con- 
coctor of the whole scheme. Besides the above constant guests at 
the Hague, there were friends, visitors, and correspondents in Eng- 
land, and amongst these the Earl of Shrewsbury, Admiral Herbert, 
Mr. Herbert his cousin, Mr. Russell, Lord Mordaunt, and the Earl 
of Wiltshire ; and the Earl of Danby, the first man in the good 
work, " a man of a vast reach, and born for great attempts, who had 
a great share in this, as he had in the marriage of the Princess of 
Orange;" next William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire; the Earl 
of Dorset, the Lord Lovelace, Lord Delamere, the Duke of Norfolk, 
the Marquis of Halifax, and his son Lord Eland ; the Marquis of 
Winchester; the Lord Pawlett, his son; the Lord Willoughby, son 
to the Earl of Lindsey ; Mr. Lister, Mr. Hampden, Mr. Powle, &c., 
with several eminent citizens of London. Besides the above, there 
were many others, wishing well to the cause, and prepared to act 
when it might be done with safety : a numerous party this last, no 
doubt, for it is pleasant to be fighting on the winning side ! 

Poor James, frightened out of his wits, sent for the bishops — the 
very men he had committed to the Tower, and begged their assist- 
ance; he restored the charter to the city of London, and removed 
the Anabaptist lord mayor, to make room for some one more accept- 
able to the civil authorities of the metropolis ; he also proclaimed a 
general pardon to all criminals, excepting Sir Robert Peyton, Sir 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 35 

Rowland Gwyn; Dr. Gilbert Burnet, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, 
and now chaplain at the Hague to the Prince of Orange ; Major 
Wildman, Samuel Johnson, and others, twelve altogether, but of 
less note. 

Lord Chancellor Jeffreys, who in some measure owed his pre- 
ferment to the gaining of the charter of London, was now forced to 
carry it back to the place from whence it was taken. The Bishop of 
Winchester, visitor of Magdalen College in Oxford, was ordered to 
settle that society according to rule and statute. A proclamation 
was issued for restoring corporations to their ancient charters, liber- 
ties, rights, and franchises. Popish lord lieutenants, justices of the 
peace, mayors, recorders, and other magistrates, were displaced, and 
Protestants put in their rooms ; so that, in the space of about twelve 
days, that formidable fabric was; in effect or in a great measure, 
demolished, which the Romish cabal had been four years erecting. 
But still James never heard any favourable news but he stopped his 
measures of redress of grievances for the time, and made no further 
advances in the promised work of restoration till some unfortunate 
intelligence of the advance of the Prince of Orange, or fresh arrivals 
of nobility to his camp, when James returned again to his work of 
restitution. Lord Danby, at York, was alone a tower of strength ; 
for this man, during the time that the Prince of Orange remained 
at or about Exeter, ten days or more after his landing at Torbay, 1 
and the King was uncertain what steps to take for meeting the 
Prince in the field, had the good fortune to intercept a letter at York, 
informing James, at Salisbury, that Lord Danby was raising friends 
at York fo.r the Prince of Orange, and that he had now got 4000 



1 The inhabitants of the clothing districts of the west of England have long been 
noted for their zealous, independent Protestant Dissenting principles ; which fact pro- 
bably induced the Protestant Duke of Monmouth to land there, and also, three years 
afterwards, the Prince of Orange. This district swarmed with Protestant adherents, 
who would have gladly turned out in a body on the landing of the Prince of Orange at 
Torbay, had not the lively recollection of the monster Judge Jeffreys, and his hangings 
and floggings, paralyzed all decisive action for a time ; but after the subsidence of the 
first panic, the Prince of Orange might have collected a small army in this district, to 
force his way to the metropolis, had he required one : so thoroughly were the whole 
population devoted to his cause— the independency of the freeholder, the protection of 
the laws, and the vitality of Protestantism. 

3* 



36 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

adherents. This letter was read by Lord Danby to his council of 
war, and then was transmitted by post to James, after another " " 
had been added to the figures. This happy thought had a direful 
effect in the council of James, producing such serious depression as 
completely to paralyze his warlike preparations, and cause him to 
pause, and think of returning to London and giving up all in 
despair. Probably this letter was the cause of no action taking place 
between the two armies, and of the final triumphant advance of 
the Prince of Orange to Reading, there to look after Lord Fever- 
shames disbanded Apostolical Irish Dragoons, who had been set at 
liberty to plunder and burn as they liked, to the number of 4000, 
and to raise contributions upon the inhabitants of Uxbridge and 
the neighbouring towns, villages, and hamlets. These men, wild 
and drunk, rode from town to town threatening to burn down every 
house, and cut the throats of the " bloody Protestants/' The coun- 
ties of Buckingham, Oxford, and Berks, were in the greatest state 
of consternation ; and the terrors of the "Irish night" (a night long 
remembered in those several counties as a solemn threatening era 
in history, worthy of being handed down to their children's children) 
were wafted to London, Nottingham, York, Derby, and other centres 
of organized disaffection. London and Westminster were in the 
greatest state of alarm ; and all the City trainbands were called out 
and kept under arms all night, to wait the flood- tide of Irish insub- 
ordination, raging mad for arrears of pay, food, &c, with nothing but 
a prospect of being cut up as marauders by William's troops, push- 
ing forward by forced marches to London, to save all there from fire 
and plunder. 

It was in this state of excitement that Daniel De Foe rode to 
Reading, to see as well as hear ; for it was reported in London that 
Reading and the neighbouring towns and villages had been totally 
destroyed by James's Apostolicals , disbanded and thrown destitute 
upon the inhabitants. Here De Foe waited the arrival of the Prince 
of Orange, with whose troops he fell in, as a volunteer, and as such 
marched on London. 

The Duke of Norfolk was at Lynne, in Norfolk, acting in his ca- 
pacity as Earl Marshal of England, embodying the county militia ; 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 37 

receiving addresses from the mayor and corporation on behalf of 
(< the laws, liberties, and Protestant religion." After a public meet- 
ing in the town on or about the 7th of December, 1688, the Duke 
of Norfolk and his retinue dined with the mayor, with great accla- 
mations, the militia being ordered out ; and " our tradesmen, sea- 
men, and mobile, have this morning generally put orange ribbons 
on their hats, echoing huzzas to the Prince of Orange and the Duke 
of Norfolk. All are in a hot ferment : God send us a good issue 
of it." 

This move of decisive action on the part of the Earl Marshal of 
England gave the impulse to the county of Norfolk, which at once 
declared for the Protestant religion and the Prince of Orange. 

On the 21st of November the Earl of Devonshire took up his 
quarters at Derby, and issued his county address to the mayor, 
lamenting the sad state of things " by so many invasions, made of late 
years, on our religion and laws" suggesting the calling a free Parlia- 
ment immediately for the settling of all grievances, with a declaration 
to the effect that the signers of this document " will, to our utmost, 
defend the Protestant religion, the laws of the kingdom, and the rights 
and liberties of the subject." Two days after there was a general 
rendezvous at Nottingham, consisting of a great number of the 
nobility and gentry, who subscribed a remarkable declaration, " in 
which they hoped that none would be bugbeared with the opprobri- 
ous terms of rebels, by which the court would fright them to become 
perfect slaves to their tyrannical usurpations. They owned it rebel- 
lion to resist a king who governed by law ; but to resist a tyrant, 
who made his will his law, was nothing but a necessary defence." 

It was to this man, William Cavendish, at Nottingham, that the 
Princess Anne of Denmark repaired in the night of the 25th of 
November, which the King only heard of on the following day, 
when he entered his palace in tears, exclaiming, " God help me ! 
my own children have forsaken me ! " 

The sudden disappearance of the Princess Anne caused the ut- 
most consternation in London, the populace taking up the cry that 
the Papists had murdered her or confined her to a prison ; and the 
guards joined in the excitement, and were ready to take vengeance 



38 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

for the outrage. Luckily, at this moment of terror, a letter from 
the Princess to the Queen was produced, showing that she was safe 
and alive, and had fled to Nottingham, to place herself under the 
protection of William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire — a man who 
was left about the throne, for this same woman's protection, by 
William III. until the year 1710, when he was deprived of all 
his employments at court, along with his party, to make room for 
Harley, St. John, Charles Leslie (the writer of the Rehearsal until 
1709), Dean Swift, Matthew Prior, Mrs. Masham, Mrs. Manley, 
Dr. Oldsworth, and other High-Church conspirators, who took pos- 
session, and held possession too, of this weak woman, as Queen 
Anne, for about four years, when they heart-broke her with their 
intrigues and contentions, all honest men having been driven away 
from the presence of her Majesty four years before her untimely 
decease. How true is it, that fool ground in a mill will come out 
ground-fool ! How could this woman ever forget the position in 
which she was placed on the night of the 25th of November, 1688, 
when she fled to Nottingham, under the protection of Compton, 
Bishop of London, and he disguised in his old military accoutre- 
ments, which he had worn when in the army — a profession which 
he ought never to have left ? 

This soldier-bishop did more, by his preaching and adulatory doc- 
trines, to bring the King into his present deserted position, than any 
other man in the kingdom. 

Of this champion of the church militant De Foe thus writes, when 
alluding to this Nottingham march : — 

Treason and Loyalty go hand in hand, 
Till on the dangerous precipice they stand ; 
EmhroiVd with laws, and injur'd nation's arms, 
Guilt breaks the circles, and dissolves the charms : 
The wretch that fawns with hypocritick breath, 
Deserts him 1 in the agonies of death ; 

1 When King James was taken at Sheerness, in the county of Kent, and fell into 
the hands of the rabble of Feversham, whether there was real danger of his person or 
not, is not material, but the King apprehending it, his Majesty applied himself to a 
clergyman who was there, in words to this effect : " Sir,— 'Tis men of your cloth who 
have reduced me to this condition ; I desire you will use your endeavours to stiU and 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 39 

What verse the blachid party can expose, 

Art sinks, as the infernal mischief grows ; 

No words the horrid principle can tell, 

"lis born of crime, and laid too deep for hell. 

Since, then, we never can the cheat explain, 

Let 's quit the fact, and dwell upon the men. 

Compton, with ecclesiastick dignity, 

Supports the regal power, and gives the lie l 

To all the usurpations of the church, 

Leaves Becket, Laud, and Sibthorp in the lurch ; 

The high canonick grandeur he pulls down, 

And sets the mitre underneath the throne ; 

Owns the supremacy of kingly right, 

And makes the crosier to the crown submit ; 

Believes the jus divinum, freely swears 

His passive homage to the unknown heirs ; 

Lays all his senses in a misty sleep, 

And took those oaths he knew he could not keep ; 2 

And as with hair-brain'd loyalty he swore, 

H' had scrupl'd none had there been forty more. 

Had he been faithful to his sovereign lord, 
And fought him with the weapons of the word ; 
Had he with honest duty first appeal'd, 
And all his sense of liberty reveal'd, 
'T had been less crime his sovereign to instruct 
Than first deceive the prince he would reje 



quiet the people, and disperse them, that I may he freed from this tumult." The gen- 
tleman's answer was cold and insignificant, and going down to the people, he returned 
no more to the King ; and several of the gentry thereabout, and clergy, who had for- 
merly preached and talked of this mad doctrine before, never offered the King their 
assistance in that distress, which, as a man, whether a prince or no prince, any man 
would have done ; which, therefore, to me renders them suspected in the integrity of 
their design, when they pretended to an absolute submission, viz., that they meant 
only that they expected it from their neighbours, whom they designed to oppress under 
the protection of this notion, but resolved never to practise the least part of it them- 
selves, if ever it should look towards them. 

1 He gave the lie, by his practice, to all those former priests that had raised the 
power of ecclesiastic authority, for he absolutely submitted it all to the regal dignity 
and divine right of the Prince. 

2 They that took this absolute oath knew, when they took it, they were not able to 
keep what they swore, if they were put to the extremity ; and so it afterwards appeared. 



40 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

In 5 s future conduct, we should all confess, 

H' had shown the statesman more, the villain less ; 

Rebellion would have had some fair pretence ; 

He might have reconcil'd it to his sense. 

Some juster reasons then he might have shown 

To put the mitre off, the helmet on ; 

Law, right, and justice, would in league appear 

To make the man of God a man of war. 

But he 1 that had his blinder duty swore, 

And dipp'd his hands in arbitrary power ; 

That leagued with hell his country to betray, 

And pull the church down first the shortest way, 

What right had he to liberty and law, 

Whom neither this could drive nor that could draw ? 

The passive priest with sword and pistol rides, 

And for the church's safety now provides ; 

Obedience buckles down to Preservation, 

And quits Allegiance to secure the nation ; 

Forgets his random oaths y consults his sense, 

And clouds his perjury with Providence. 

On the receipt of the " 0" letter of the Earl of Danby at Salis- 
bury, his Majesty became panic-struck, bled freely from the nose, and 
was completely overpowered in mind and body, which gave time for 
the wavering in his camp to consider of the best means of escaping 
from their forlorn and perilous condition. Most of them at once 
went over to the Prince of Orange at Exeter, while poor James, the 
dry martyr of Daniel De Foe — the priestly sacrifice to sycophancy 
and want of principle — poor fellow ! deceived, misled, betrayed, and 
neglected — returned to London as he could, leaving Lord Tyrcon- 
nePs Apostolical Dragoons, wild Irish Papists, at Reading, in Berk- 
shire, under the command of the Earl of Feversham, as some ima- 
ginary barrier between himself and his victorious son-in-law, now 
at Salisbury, in the adjoining county of Wilts, and working his way 

1 Had not the person whom this character belongs to supported the doctrine of abso- 
lute obedience to the crown, his after conduct had been less liable to censure j for, 
though without question he was in the right of it at last, yet by his own professed doc- 
trine, which he taught and encouraged in all people, it was downright perjury and 
rebellion in him, whatever it would have been in another. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 41 

by secure, yet rapid, strides towards the metropolis. In this dilemma, 
poor deserted James wrote from Whitehall, December 10th, 1688, 
a letter to the Earl of Feversham, to the effect that, as he had no 
confidence in his army, he had come to the resolution to leave the 
kingdom, " to endeavour to secure himself the best he could." On 
the receipt of this letter, the Earl of Feversham disbanded all his 
Irish troops, and left them at free quarters on the inhabitants of 
Reading, Henley, and the neighbouring towns, villages, and hamlets, 
to the dismay of the inhabitants, who fled in all directions, many 
going to London with the news that Reading was burnt down, with 
Uxbridge, Maidenhead, Henley, &c. 

The Prince hearing from the Earl of Feversham the state of the 
King's army, disbanded by royal authority, and also from the flying 
inhabitants of at least four counties, of the firing of towns and vil- 
lages, and the marching on London by this disbanded apostolical 
rabble of a soldiery without commander, officers, or pay, at once 
issued the following proclamation from Henley-on-Tames, the 13th 
of December, 1688 :— - 

" By the Prince of Orange. — Declaration. 

" Whereas we are informed, That divers regiments, troops, and 
companies, have been encouraged to disperse themselves in an un- 
usual and unwarrantable manner, whereby the public peace is very 
much disturbed, we have thought fit hereby to require all colonels 
and commanders-in-chief of such regiments, troops, and companies, 
by beat of drum or otherwise, to call together the several officers 
and soldiers belonging to their respective regiments, troops, and 
companies, in such places as they shall find most convenient for their 
rendezvous, and there to keep them in good order and discipline; 
and we do likewise direct and require all such officers and soldiers 
forthwith to repair to such place as shall be appointed for that pur- 
pose by the respective colonels or commanders-in-chief, whereof 
speedy notice is to be given unto us, for our further orders. 

" Given at our court at Henley, the thirteenth day of December, 
1688. 

"W. H. Prince of Orange." 



42 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

During all these doubts and difficulties, in this ever-to-be-remem- 
bered month of December, 1688, the Earl of Tyrconnel threatened 
great opposition in Ireland, by setting the Papist population upon 
the Protestant ; and in his measures he was heartily supported by 
Sir William Temple, the patron of Swift and Stella, if not the father 
of both, as has been seriously believed and affirmed by parties worthy 
of attention as authorities. The Earl of Clarendon too, who had 
gone over to the Prince under the expectation of succeeding the 
Earl of Tyrconnel in the government of Ireland, became one of the 
Prince's most bitter opponents, through mere mortification at being 
disappointed in his ambitious designs. The English army, too, be- 
came so jealous of the Dutch troops, that disasters threatened on 
every hand, in England as well as Ireland, so that the Prince knew 
not whom to trust or what to do. He dared not trust the English 
army, and he could not spare his Dutch troops from London on any 
demand whatever; so Ireland was left for a considerable time in 
a most doubtful and affrighted position, the Protestant population 
coming over to England in large numbers for security. But, of all 
parties in this time of change, the clergy, who had preached passive 
obedience and jure-divino principles to such a point that they scarcely 
knew where to put themselves, were subjected to the greatest amount 
of contempt; for they had sworn allegiance to one king on the jure- 
divino principle, and now they were prepared to swear allegiance to 
another on the de-facto principle, and one of these opposed to the 
other ; they had sworn to serve both, but their real intention was 
to serve only one, and that James, the man whom they had decoyed 
into a snare, and then sacrificed. " The prevarication of too many 
(clergy) in so sacred a matter contributed not a little to forward the 
growing atheism of the present age. The truth was, the greatest 
part of the clergy had entangled themselves so far with those strange 
conceits of the divine right of monarchy, and the unlawfulness of 
resistance in any case, and they so engaged themselves, by asserting 
these things so often and so publicly, that they did not know how 
to disengage themselves in honour or conscience.-" So writes Bishop 
Burnet, in his History of his Own Times : the man who, beyond all 
other men, influenced the success of the glorious revolution of 1688 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 43 

by his example, judgment, and labour in the good cause, and yet 
was refused ordination to the bishopric of Salisbury by San croft, 
Archbishop of Canterbury, when his sovereign had appointed him 
to the office; and so the Bishop of Salisbury was ordained by 
commission. 

The declaration of rights was made by his Highness the Prince 
of Orange to the people of England on his landing at Torbay in 
November, 1688, on which compact, offered to the people by the 
Prince (which " affirms, that the religion of the people shall be 
maintained, and that effectual care shall be taken that the inha- 
bitants shall neither be deprived of their religion nor of their civil 
rights, which is so much the more necessary, because the greatness 
and security both of kings, royal families, and of all such as are in 
authority, as well as the happiness of their subjects and people, de- 
pend in a most especial manner upon the exact observation and 
maintenance of these their laws, liberties, and customs^), the great 
mass of the dissenting population of England made common cause 
against King James, with the clergy and members of the Church of 
England, for the support of the Prince of Orange. Now, in the face 
of this declaration of rights, and the support offered by the dissenting 
population of England for the deposing, by the power of Dutch 
troops, the representative of hereditary right in England, because 
that representative, King James II., had ruled by his arbitrary 
will, to the contravention of laws made by the delegated free- 
holders of England in Parliament assembled, the Queen Anne, the 
successor of the Prince of Orange, who owed her right to the throne 
of these realms through the compact made at this revolution of 1688 
between Prince and people, continued nevertheless to reign as Queen 
of England in direct opposition to the spirit of this national compact, 
solemnly entered into between Prince and people at that time. The 
vitality of Protestantism is the foundation of the constitution esta- 
blished in 1688 by Prince and people; and any act of the court 
tampering with that vitality, is a direct infringement on the spirit of 
that compact, and as such is a violation of the spirit of the British 
constitution, as by agreement settled. 

May I ask what is the Privy Council scheme of education of our 



44 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

time ? What is its object? Is it to check the vitality of Protest- 
antism ? or is it to strengthen and extend that vitality ? Has it 
an object : is there any statecraft or state policy lurking below or 
behind it ? Is it a second Church-of-England establishment, created 
out of the taxes, in order to strengthen the patronage of the execu- 
tive power, according to its imaginary requirements, from the healthy 
growth of Protestant dissentism? Is the growth of Protestant 
dissent the grand moving principle of reaction of a Privy Council 
check ? I believe the Privy Council scheme of education to be 
fraudulent in its object. I believe that scheme to be the old plot 
or conspiracy of Louis XIV. and Cardinal Mazarin, his minister, 
revived. I believe that education scheme to be a fraudulent pre- 
tence — a binding, curbing, impeding of the vitality of Protestant- 
ism; — and if I be right in this supposition, I am right also in 
my declaration, that the Privy Council scheme of education is an 
infringement of that compact made at the revolution of 1688 be- 
tween William Prince of Orange and the Protestant population of 
England — a compact by which her present Majesty Queen Victoria 
holds her right to the throne of these realms. I am right or I am 
wrong in my declaration, that the Privy Council scheme of educa- 
tion is a curbing of the vitality of Protestantism, and as such is 

UNCONSTITUTIONAL. 

Irrespective of the compact entered into between Prince and 
people at the glorious revolution of 1688 for the support of the 
Protestant religion, the true interest of the sovereigns of Great Britain 
can be none other but the cherishing of the vitality of Protestantism 
within these realms. This is the real strength of the British sove- 
reigns ; on this they must depend on the day of continental aggres- 
sion. The vitality of Protestantism is the responding fortification 
to Cherbourg; this is our fortifications at Portsmouth; this is our 
stronghold— this is our breastwork, behind which the Protestantism 
of Holland, Denmark, and Germany, with Switzerland, must take 
their shelter, and abide the threatened attack. Great Britain must 
place itself at the head of the Protestantism of Europe ; there it 
has been placed, and there it must abide ; but it never can abide 
there, if the Executive Government is to be allowed to tamper with 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 45 

the civil and religious liberties of Great Britain, under the pretence 
of educating the people. 

What right has the Church-of-England sect to take money from 
the national exchequer to educate all sects in Church-of-England 
principles, for the sake of increasing the patronage and influence of 
the crown? This is a question which the freeholders of Great 
Britain would do well to ask themselves. Is the patronage of the 
crown so deficient in strength that a second Church of England has 
to be created from the public taxation of the country, in order to 
give the ministry of the day an additional power, by the distribu- 
tion of patronage foisted upon the people, under the pretence of 
education ? What a serious mistake for a king to allow a priesthood 
to crawl along stealthily till the question may fairly be asked, Who 
owns the throne ? Who is king ? Church or king — which has it ? 
Which stands first? Is not one first — one church establishment 
sufficient encumbrance for the patience, the endurance of royalty 
to be clogged with, without adding a second clog — one which may 
be as a rope around the neck of encumbered or fettered royalty in 
some dire, sad hour of difficulty ; and when that second clog of a 
church is unconstitutional and dangerous to the free action of the 
vitality of Protestantism, professed to be enjoyed unfettered and 
unencumbered by the independent freeholders of this nation ? 

Could it be possible to draw an extreme case, to show how 
this machinery might act in some untoward hour of executive 
embarrassment ? 

Suppose this education scheme should crawl along till it had 
completed its spider-like web or network of patronage, and should 
stealthily obtain the power of standing as regulator between the 
throne and the Church of England— sometimes acting with one, 
sometimes with the other, and sometimes with both, but always 
against the vitality of the Protestantism of the freeholders of this 
nation — where is royalty then, subjected to two masters instead of 
one ? The Church of England, in all conscience, is strong enough 
in its lord bishops, its pluralities, its patronages, and its combina- 
tions of working powers for good or evil, without adding a second 
power, which may at any time be added to the first, so as to weigh 



46 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

down the honest independency of action in royalty. The education 
scheme may be made one of the most powerful engines for the 
propagation of priestly arbitrary principles that this kingdom ever 
knew. The Church of England ruined James II., which should be 
a warning to all future sovereigns never to allow ruin to proceed 
from such a cause again ; and the safest way is to break up at once 
any scheme, whatever called, which may be screwed up to subserve 
the arbitrary power of the Church of England, enslave the throne, 
or uproot all civil as well as religious liberty within these realms. 
The Privy Council education scheme is as unconstitutional as it is 
dangerous to religious and civil liberty. 

Poor James I — actually nattered out of his throne, to make room 
for a stranger ! What a warning to kings this should be — and to 
people too ! — for this flattery, if pushed forward by all the slow pro- 
gression of the tortoise, might end in utter ruin to both king and 
people. The priest flatters — for what? For power • power second, 
if not sufficiently strong to obtain power first ; or, as Locke says, 
" that prince and priest may, like Castor and Pollux, be worshipped 
together as divine in the same temple by us poor lay subjects; and 
that sense and reason, law, properties, rights, and liberties,, shall be 
understood as the oracles of those deities shall interpret or give 
signification to them, and never be made use of in the world to 
oppose the absolute and free will of either of them." 

De Eoe, in his Review, vol. vii. p. 304, states, that " It was for 
many years together, and I am witness to it, that the pulpit sounded 
nothing but the duty of absolute submission, obedience without re- 
serve, subjection to princes as God's vicegerents, accountable to none, 
to be withstood in nothing, and by no person. I have heard it pub- 
licly preached that if the King commanded my head, and sent his 
messengers to fetch it, I was bound to submit, and stand still while 
it was cut off. I forbear to repeat the foolish extravagances that 
these things ran up to. There are too many books still extant of 
the same kind. Let any man but read a few of L'Estrange's Ob- 
servators, Toleration Discussed, Thompson's Rule of Allegiance, the 
History of Divine Right, and many other volumes of that age, and 
particularly the addresses of the corporations, &c.,in those days called 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 47 

loyal, and lie shall find the absurdest and the most ridiculous notions 
that ever Protestant nation was wheedled into. And what was the 
effect of this ? The cheat was fatal two ways. Had those that 
preached it been sincere — had they been the fools they made the 
King believe they would be — we had all been undone, our liberties 
had been sacrificed, our laws made to truckle to the will of the most 
arbitrary tyrant, and our parliaments made tools to the pleasure of 
the Prince, like the Protestants of France ; for the elections, by the 
new modelling the corporations, were all coming into his own hand. 
These were the steps one side drove at, but the mistake lay another 
way : the thing was a cheat, and the King fell into the snare. He 
thought he had brought them to his beck, and the first touch he 
gave them of the practice, they flew in his face, called in foreign help, 
took arms against God's vicegerent, unswore all their allegiance to 
him, and drove him out of the kingdom. This they now hand- 
somely expressed by vigorous and successful withstanding arbitrary 
power; ^and the words are copious indeed in their meaning — fully 
expressive of all that happened between the landing of the Prince 
of Orange and the Bevolution." 

The High- Church party always considered Charles I. to be a 
martyr, and what De Foe allowed and termed a wet martyr; James 
being a martyr too, and for distinction's sake termed a dry martyr. 
Henrietta, the Queen of the first, might be the principal cause of 
the one martyrdom, while the unprincipled conduct of the clergy 
of the Church of England was certainly the cause of the other. 

After a good deal of squaring of consciences to make different 
sorts of oaths fit, such as de-facto allegiance oaths, and jure-divino 
allegiance oaths, the poor mortified clergy set themselves to consider 
what should square with their interests in the monopoly of all the 
good things of this life, to the exclusion of this or that brother, 
who thought this or that on certain tenets of doctrine or disci- 
pline. So the old feeling of persecution of Dissenters revived in all 
its vigour; and although the Bill of Rights, founded upon the 
Prince of Orange's Declaration of Eights, afforded all the prin- 
ciples of freedom of action in religious matters, yet the spirit of 
religious equality was absent from the breasts of the clergy of the 



48 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Established Church, The vitality of Protestantism — the great 
bulwark of national England — was absent ; there was still left the 
spirit of persecution in the breasts of the clergy. 

The Bill of Rights passed in the first session of William and 
Mary, 1689, and is the Magna Charta of our religious equalities. 
De Foe, speaking of this measure in his Review (vol. ii. 147), says, 
" The Declaration of Rights of the people of England has stabbed 
all sorts of civil tyranny to the heart ; and the English monarchy, 
under the present just and legal administration, is perfectly purged 
and abstracted from all that ever the Dissenters complained of. T 
know but one thing left that we have to ask of the government — 
the abolition of tests, sacraments, and religious obligations at our 
admission to trusts in the government." 

The Bill of Rights is the grand charter by which the sovereigns 
of this country should take their rule ; and stir up and keep alive 
through the length and breadth of this empire, for the sake of the 
national safety; vigorously to be kept in working health by the 
vitality of Protestantism — a vitality which can alone be supported 
by the strict observance of a principle of religious equality. 

Any infringement of the rights of equality in Protestantism is a 
weakening of the resisting force ; to be applied, if necessary, against 
the inroads of the arbitrary powers of continental Europe. There are 
pluralities in our church — this is a robbing of the parish for the sake 
of the parson — where is the Bill of Rights ? Away with this ! for 
it is a great source of weakness in the vitality of Protestantism. 

After the heterogeneous mass of opposing interests, those of the 
real patriots on the one hand, and the affrighted vested interests on the 
other, things began to fall into their old channel ; and so, on the 29th 
of October, 1689, their Majesties accepted an invitation given by the 
citizens of London at the Guildhall, when Sir Thomas Pilkington, 
a great champion for the people's rights and liberties, was knighted. 
On this occasion great efforts were made by certain well-wishers to 
their Majesties to give every support to the demonstration ; a guard 
of honour was formed for the occasion, which was placed under the 
command of the Earl of Peterborough, and was especially a royal 
body-guard of honour to their Majesties' persons, and was composed, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 49 

for the most part, of Protestant dissenters, they being, in heart and 
soul, the honest supporters and abettors of the glorious Revolution 
of 1688. 

Amongst these mounted champions of revolution, and not far 
from the King's person, was espied by the keen-eyed Oldmixon, 
Foe, the hosier of Freeman's Court, Cornhill. Oldmixon, looking 
for a flaw in this new development of regal power and pomp, could 
not allow the procession to wend its slow length along the crowded 
streets, but he must spy out the weakest point, and proclaim it to 
the world in his next weekly paper, the Observator, and show by his 
detracting pen the low company royalty had been seen allied with, 
when proceeding to these civic metropolitan festivities. 

It may safely be declared that there was not one man in the whole 
British empire more enthusiastically devoted to the letter and the 
spirit of the glorious Revolution of 1688 than Daniel De Foe; for 
during the whole process of this political birth he was as one demented 
with joy and expectation : he supported the movement by his pen 
and by his person ; he was a constant attendant upon the House of 
Commons on all important discussions, and, as opportunity offered, 
poured out, as few but himself could pour out, monthly, weekly, or 
daily, if required, the fundamental principles of the British constitu- 
tion, and demonstrated the hollowness of preaching a doctrine of 
adulation and obsequiousness, the doctrine of passive obedience to all 
kings — a doctrine based upon self, for the supplying the growing wants 
and desires of pride. Self and pride lay at the bottom of all the jure- 
divino doctrines preached to confiding mortals from the church pulpits 
at this time; for the jure-divino text was only applicable to prosper- 
ous times, or so long as we and ours stood all well with royalty. 

De Foe at this time again and again pointed out that the Church 
of England was passive obedient altogether, only so long as James 
the Second did not attempt to interfere with its revenues ; but when 
the pluralities and endowments were threatened by a royal inter- 
ference, passive-obedience principles and devotion to the house of 
Stuart were wafted into nothingness at once — they ceased to exist ; 
and the result was, that the rotten, unprincipled clerical support was 
thrown into the scale of the glorious -revolution advocacy for the 

4 



50 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

time, but only for the time, for the support was rotten in principle : 
it was only a support founded upon panic and disappointment. But 
such as it was, it was temporarily at William's service, and he availed 
himself of it ; and thus the adulatory supporters of the base house 
of Stuart became the main instruments in the hands of William 
Prince of Orange for getting rid of James II., the corrupt tool 
and pensioner of Louis XIV. of France, and his minister, Cardinal 
Mazarin. 

Poor James II. ! his father married a fool, and, as poor Ebenezer 
Elliott would say, "all t' childer braided after t' mother." The 
French-Italian connection, Henrietta, the daughter of Henry IV. 
of France, was a serious misfortune to the house of Stuart — a match 
which imported into the royal family of Britain the most tyrannical, 
profligate blood of the worst family of Italy, the Medici of Florence^ 
making James II., Charles II., and the Duchess of Orleans, great- 
grandchildren of Catherine de Medici of Florence, and afterwards 
of France — the worst woman that this world ever knew since the 
times of the Roman emperors ; for there were few empresses of Rome 
equal to Catherine de Medici of Paris, both for murder and lust. 

Although the Henrietta importation was disastrous to the Stuarts, 
I have the impression that another match made by the Stuarts pre- 
vious to the time of Henrietta, had much to do with the self-will, 
instability, rashness, want of caution, and courage without prudence, 
of this family. This is my impression, taken from the picture gallery 
at Hampton Court, and taken from there only. I allude to Ann of 
Denmark, the wife of James I., and mother of Charles I. 

It would be rather a curious and interesting study in the picture 
galleries of Italy, Denmark, and France to trace the origin of the 
external forms of body of Charles I., Charles II., and James II. 
Perhaps Denmark and Florence might divide the honours between 
them. I believe Italy would claim the second Charles and the 
second James, as her own, without any disputing. On James I.'s 
prospect of forming respectable matches for his children, he must 
show himself worthy of the connection; for to the Roman Catholic 
Spain he must sacrifice the whole power of principle and thought, 
lay and clerical, in the Church of England, by ordering a foolish, silly 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 51 

book, regulating games on the village green after morning service at 
church on Sunday. This was done, as one of James's clerical apolo- 
gists has declared, to bring young folks together at ale-drinkings 
and dancings, for the encouragement of matrimony, and the increase 
of population, as though our northern climate required a fillip to 
bring young folks forward, and give them confidence to face the 
labyrinth of matrimony. 

From a very early period the games and pastimes of the people 
have been a subject of regulation for kings and parliaments, mostly 
with the view of restraining or checking those which were useless, and 
forwarding such athletic exercises as might be useful qualifications for 
the arts and endurances of war ; but James I. stands alone as the 
King of England who encouraged the sports of the people in order 
to debase them ; and he did this to please the Roman Catholic power 
of Spain, when Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, was in England 
proposing the second daughter of the King of Spain as a match 
for his son Charles, afterwards Charles I. What a contrast here 
with his predecessor, Elizabeth, who harboured 50,000 Flemish and 
Dutch Protestants, and protected them in London against the tyranny 
of a Roman Catholic oppressor — Spain ! How short-sighted James 
the First must have been, to raise within his dominions that power 
of organized dissent in religious matters which afterwards went far 
to sever the head from the body of his son Charles on the scaffold 
at Whitehall ! What a sacrifice to make ! — what a paying for the 
whistle ! — a kingdom severed to its centre for a match with a second 
daughter of the persecuting King of Spain ! James was a weak 
man, who could ride after a stag or a fox, and drink ale ; he was a 
slobbering, coarse man, but no king. 

As though the Stuarts could derive nothing from disaster, Charles 
the First reprinted this same book for the regulating Sunday games ; 
and this he did as a sop to the Roman Catholic power of France, 
about eighteen months before Henrietta landed in England as her 
future Queen. Why! this is Italy all over; for Catherine could not 
leave Florence for France without taking along with her an Italian 
marriage settlement, providing for the persecution of Protestants 
in France. 

4* 



52 LTFE OF DE FOE. 

In order to look a little into the regulation of the games and 
sports of the people, to show the spirit of previous legislation, and 
compare it with that of the Stuarts, I will give an extract or two 
on the subject from a sporting work of considerable antiquity. 

In the ninth year of Edward III., a.d. 1386, royal proclamation 
(the act of Parliament for such matters in that day) was made, com- 
manding the exercise of archery and artillery, and prohibiting the 
exercise of casting stones, bars, hand and foot balls, cock-fighting, 
et alios varios ludos. This proclamation was renewed in the nine- 
teenth year of the same reign, but without effect, till divers of these 
games were prohibited, under penalties, by act of Parliament of 
12th Richard II. and 11th Henry IV., and in the twelfth year of 
Edward IV., and again in the thirty-ninth year of Henry VIII. 

In the third year of Edward IV. foreign cards were prohibited to 
be imported, for the benefit of the poor card-makers of England, for 
clivers poor families were maintained by it; and therefore it was 
resolved, in the said case of monopolies, that the Queen may not 
suppress the making of cards within the realm, no more than making 
of dice, bowls, balls, hawks-hoods, bells, dog-couples, or other-like, 
which are works of labour and industry, though they serve for 
pleasure, recreation, or pastime, and cannot be suppressed but by 
Parliament. 

It would appear that the Queen, though an Englishwoman, was 
prohibiting the manufacture of the above articles in England, in 
order that she might profit by the monopoly of the importations 
which she enjoyed from the King, her husband, as royal allowance 
or pinmoney. 

"I consider/' adds the author above quoted, "King James I. 
was not well advised, a.d. 1618 (the very time when Gondomar, the 
Spanish ambassador, was in England proposing the second daughter 
of the King of Spain as a match for his son Charles), when he 
declared to his subjects, these recreations undermentioned to be 
lawful, viz., dancing of men and women, archery, leaping, vaulting, 
May-games, Whitsun-ales, morris-dancing, setting up may-poles, 
and other sports therewith used; and commanded that no such 
honest mirth or recreation should be forbidden to his subjects upon 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 53 

S unday or holyday after divine service ended, which was confirmed 
by King Charles I., a.d. 1633, allowing further, the feasts of dedi- 
cations of churches, commonly called wakes, and all manly exercises, 
to be there used with all freedom, But, tempora mutantur" adds 
our author, "our gracious Queen (Anne, 1711), and our reverend 
bishops, will not patronize any such custom or allowance. And that 
the ignorant people were misled, and thought such pastimes inno- 
cent sort of mirth, appears by this story of a Welsh parson. John 
(a poor boy) was bred at school, and, being a plodding lad at his 
books, used to assist some gentlemen's sons that went to the same 
school. iVfterwards John took a trip to the university, and got a 
degree and orders. He, in process of time, upon some occasion, 
comes for London in a tattered gown. One day a gentleman that 
had gone to school with him meets him, and knew him. ' Jack/ 
saith the gentleman, ' I am glad to see thee; how do'st do?' c I 
thank you, noble squire/ replied Jack. The gentleman invited him 
to the tavern, and after some discourse of their school, and former 
conversation, the gentleman asked him where he lived. Jack 
answered, ' In Wales/ The gentleman asked him if he were mar- 
ried. The parson replied he was, and that he had a wife and seven 
children. Then the gentleman inquired of the value of his benefice. 
The parson answered it was worth £9 per annum. ' Pugh I 3 quoth 
the gentleman, 'how canst thou maintain thy wife and children 
with that?' ' Oh ! sir/ quoth Jack, shrugging his shoulders, 'we 
live by the churchyard; my wife sells ale, and I keep a bear, and 
after evening service (my parishioners being so kind as to bring 
their dogs to church) I bring out the bear, and bate him ; and for 
about two hours we are all heave and shove, staff and tail, 'till we 
are all very hot and thirsty, and then we step into our Joan, and 
drink stoutly of her nut-brown ale ; and I protest, squire/ saith he, 
■ Ave make a very pretty business of it/ " 

Such would be the state of things in England at the time when 
James I. contemplated a Spanish match for his son; and such 
would be the state of England when Charles, that son, contemplated 
a Erehch-Italian match for himself. The whole foreign-connection 
influence went to desecrate the Christian sabbath, debase the people, 



54 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

and corrupt the clergy, and all for the riding rough-shod by royalty 
over a servile, debased people, thoughtless and drunken, carrying 
the colours of arbitrary power. The whole Sunday-debasing influence 
was a political trap of royalty to ensnare the people ; the people too 
saw this, and refused the bait j the project generally was unpopular, 
except with the extreme lower flat of civilization, the dregs of the 
populace. 

The above may be considered to be rather a lengthy digression, 
but the reading sport-books by royal authority in the parish church 
in the Sunday morning's service will require a little margin for a 
digression; for the whole subject, or nearly so, will have its origin 
in that book-reading order. Dissent took its position rank and file, 
in regimental or brigade order, on that day. That day organized 
the dissenters of England ; that organization, increasing in its course, 
cut off the head of one king, and sent another, a penniless vaga- 
bond and wanderer, to St. Germain's, there to live a life of exile — 
a receiver of the bread of charity from the hard hand of Louis XIV. 
of France. Yes ! and his grandson, Charles Stuart, of the memorable 
year of '45, had a price fixed for the deliverance of his head — the 
head of a traitor upon a charger — by the British Government, 
carried on, not by a Stuart — no ! but by the Elector of Hanover. 
The poor fallen Stuarts were advertised and hunted down as traitors 
in their own kingdom of Scotland, through the folly of James I., 
their ancestor. The traitor that he was ! he tried to betray England 
and Protestantism to Spain, and he lost his kingdom to his posterity 
by the attempt. 

This house of Stuart spent tens of thousands of pounds sterling, 
and murdered thousands too — I think 8000 — in gaol or otherwise, 
in one single reign, that of James II. : they sowed the wind ; and 
Pym, Oliver Cromwell, Sydney, Prynne, Hampden, and others, by 
scores, with William III. of glorious memory, spent their millions 
and tens of millions of pounds sterling, with hundreds of thou- 
sands of precious human lives, to counteract the evils inflicted 
by this unprincipled race of kings, the house of Stuart ; and only 
half the work has been accomplished, even up to this day. My 
digression on this accursed race is voluminous; but I make no 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



55 



apology, but leave my subject aud its requirements to make apologies 
as we go along. 1 

It is stated in a vindication of Lord Shaftesbury — who was tried, 
as all the leading men of the reign of Charles II. were tried, for 
some plot or other, real or pretended, Roman Catholic or Presby- 
terian — as the oppressor Charles or his brother James had the power 
of pulling the strings — Lord Shaftesbury's real offence being the 
uncompromising open opposition he gave in his place in Parliament 
to the succession to the throne of these realms by James Duke 
of York. He was tried a.d. 1681, and acquitted, to the great joy 
of the nation, who testified their feelings in court by cheers and 
acclamations, and by bonfires at night through the country ; the 
witnesses for the crown, on their way to the court at West- 
minster, having to be guarded through the city by the sheriffs 
with a strong guard to the limit of the jurisdiction of the city of 
London, Temple Bar. It is stated in this vindication what was the 
class of witnesses produced by the crown on these sham Roman- 
Catholic-plot trials; for most of the plots were shams trumped 
up by the royal brothers and their abettors, the sycophants and 
prostitutes of the court. 

" They had such a medley of evidence as is almost comical to 
consider : there were the Macks and the Mounsieurs, the midwife 
and the priest, the skip-kennel and the Newgate birds, the justice 
and the bog-trotter, the countess and the kitchen wench. No 
discourse was heard among them but captains' places, deaneries, 
rewards, gratuities, preferments, and as much money as you will. 
They were advanced from bonny-clabber to claret and frontiniack ; 
from turnips and oat- cakes to oysters and pheasants ; from brogues 
and handle (a cow-band) to velvet and cloth of silver. They discoursed 

1 Examples of the way in which the Stuarts exercised arbitrary power are but too 
abundant; but the following may be quoted: — "At this time (1635, or thereabout), 
Sir Edward Coke, Sir Thomas Wentworth, and Sir Eobert Philips, were pricked to 
be high sheriffs for Buckingham, York, and Somersetshire, to incapacitate them to 
be members of this Commons' House ; whereunto the Bishop (Williams, late Lord 
Keeper and Bishop of Lincoln, and made Archbishop of York by poor infatuated 
Charles I., when up to the chin in national and personal difficulties — his own bringing 
on) alluded when he was told that he should be restrained from the House of Peers. 
' What !' said he, ' am I made high sheriff of Huntingdonshire ?' " 



56 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



of his Majesty as if they had been of his council, and of his ministers 
as if they had been their confederates." In this vindication there is 
a sentiment of Lord Shaftesbury on Popery, the mainspring of all 
these plots, which is worthy of being handed down to the latest 
posterity. " That Popery and slavery, like two sisters, go hand in 
hand; sometimes the one goes first, sometimes the other, in at doors, 
but the other is always following close at hand. 

" In England Popery was to have brought in slavery; in Scotland 
slavery went before, and Popery was to follow" 

To show how heartily De Foe entered into the movement of the 
Revolution, and his admiration of William III., the hero of it, it 
may be stated, that he annually kept or commemorated the 4th of 
November, in token of our deliverance, as a day of thanksgiving, 
for it was the day of the landing of William III. — " a day," says 
he, " famous on various accounts, and every one of them dear to 
Britons who love their country, value the Protestant interest, or 
have an aversion to tyranny and oppression. On this day William 
the Third was born ; on this day he married the daughter of 
England ; and on this day he rescued the nation from a bondage 
worse than that of Egypt — a bondage of soul as well as bodily 
servitude — a slavery to the ambition and raging lust of a generation 
set on fire by pride, avarice, cruelty, and blood." 

Bravo ! De Foe ! Never had Britain a subject more devoted, 
more loyal, and more religiously thankful for the glorious revolution 
of 1688 than thou. It was a movement after thine own heart, 
Daniel ! 



CHAPTER II. 

We have said " Poor James/' in having to run for his life and 
desert the throne of his fathers ; but may we not say, with equal 
propriety and feeling, " Poor William/' who married the daughter, 
and was thus dragged into the inheritance. Which was most to be 
pitied is a question for speculation ; but certainly William came in 
for a hard stone seat, a Scotch throne, and a crown of thorns ; his 
whole reign was a scene of annoyance, perplexity, and disappoint- 
ment, which he was made to feel in a thousand forms every year of 
his life ; for William was no sooner seated upon the throne than the 
old Whig and Tory jealousies at once broke out to disturb his peace, 
and all parties appeared to act as though William had been sup- 
ported in a church -in- danger panic ; but now, when time had been 
given for cool reflection, all, both Whig and Tory, regretted what 
they had done, and heartily wished their old King back again, for 
he was a "true-born Englishman." The Whigs acted with the 
greatest jealousy towards their new sovereign, and thus forced 
William into the arms of the Tories, who held out hopes that they 
would accomplish everything ; but they were powerless, for they had 
a Tory House of Commons, devoted to the late King, and they 
would advance no money, even for the most necessary demands of 
the government. The Tories, devoted to their James IL, repealed the 
Septennial Act of Charles II. in the Commons; and they did this to 
annoy William, which forced him to dissolve the Parliament. The 
Whigs annoying the Tories, and the Tories embarrassing the Whigs, 
and both loving the Pretender, forced William to pass through his 
troublesome reign as he could ; he borrowed money, to be paid out 
of the estate some time or other; he borrowed thirteen millions, 
and left it as a legacy ; and with it he also left the legacy of borrow- 
ing, which was the secret of the funding system and of our national 



58 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

debt. Whigs and Tories contending for place and power, forced 
William on the system, and thanks to them for it. In derision I 
say it, thanks to them for it ! There was not a single aspirant for 
preferment under his government who, when he met with disappoint- 
ment, did not return to the support of the abdicated James, and 
give as a reason that he was a " true-born Englishman." Poor 
William's Dutch origin was thrown in his face by every disap- 
pointed expectant of place or office. His Parliament thwarted and 
annoyed him in every way ; and really, if he had been a vagrant 
bastard instead of a legitimate-born man and son-in-law of a King 
of England, they could not have treated him with more jealousy or 
suspicion. They behaved scurvily to him, after his noble risks and 
behaviour to them. These men had acted as sycophants to James, 
and they acted as bullies to William ; they were like slaves set free 
— insolent in their possession of freedom, as all slaves are and will 
be. Who ever knew a crawling lick-the-dust sycophant that was 
not a bully when in power ? I never did. I have always observed 
through my life, that these two characters are only halves of one 
whole, for they both rest together invariably in one breast. 

Low writers were employed to write doggerel verses or ballads on 
foreigners, Dutchmen, &c, with the view of annoying royalty. In- 
sulted to the last degree by the Commons, in being forced to disband 
his army to that insignificant standard as to render the King con- 
temptible in the eyes of the powers of Europe, so thoroughly dis- 
gusted was William with the ruling powers of this kingdom, that 
he heartily wished himself back again in Holland, and clear from 
all the troubles and perplexities of governing so ungrateful a 
people. At this juncture, to answer the scurrilous attacks upon 
William's Dutch Presbyterian origin, and, if possible, to check the 
national ingratitude, so constantly expressed in the national cant of 
" He was a true-born Englishman," De Foe was induced to write 
his poem with this title, to show what was a true-born Englishman ; 
and the work was very successful. I will give a few extracts, for 
the sentiments are true to the letter, how little soever they may be 
flattering to the ideas of our national vanity for distinctness or 
antiquity of breed as Englishmen. He observes, in his Preface : — 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 59 

" When I see the town full of lampoons and invectives against 
Dutchmen, only because they are foreigners, and the King re- 
proached and insulted by insolent pedants and ballad-making poets, 
for employing foreigners, and for being a foreigner himself, I con- 
fess myself moved by it to remind our nation of their own original, 
thereby to let them see what a banter is put upon ourselves in it ; 
since, speaking of Englishmen ab origine, we are really all foreigners 
ourselves." 

"As for answers, banters, true English Billingsgate, I expect 
them till nobody will buy, and then the shop will be shut. Had I 
wrote it for the gain of the press, I should have been concerned at 
its being printed again and again by pirates, as they call them, 
and paragraphmen : but if they do justice, and print it true, ac- 
cording to the copy, they are welcome to sell it for a penny, if they 
please : the pence, indeed, is the end of their works." 

Again : " Possibly somebody may take me for a Dutchman, in 
which they are mistaken ; but I am one that would be glad to see 
Englishmen behave themselves better to strangers and to governours 
also, that one might not be reproached in foreign countries for 
belonging to a nation that wants manners." 

" As to vices, who can dispute our intemperance, while an 
honest drunken fellow is a character in a man's praise ? All our 
reformations are banters, and will be so, till our magistrates and 
gentry reform themselves by way of example." 

From the Introduction : — 

Speak, Satire, for there 's none can tell like thee, 
Whether 'tis folly, pride, or knavery, 
That makes this discontented land appear 
Less happy now in times of peace than war ; 
"Why civil feuds disturb the nation more 
Than all our bloody wars have done before. 

Fools out of favour grudge at knaves in place, 
And men are always Jionest in disgrace : 
The court preferments make men knaves in course, 
But they which would be in them would be worse. 



60 * LIFE OF DE FOE. 

'Tis not at foreigners that we repine, 
Would foreigners their perquisites resign ; 
The grand contention 's plainly to be seen, 
To get some men put out, and some put in. 
Tor this our senators make long harangues, 
And florid members whet their polish'd tongues. 
Statesmen are always sick of one disease, 
And a good pension gives them present ease ; 
That 's a specific makes them all content 
With any king and any government. 

Whet thy just anger at the nation's pride, 

And with keen phrase repel the vicious tide. 

To Englishmen their own beginnings show, 

And ask them why they slight their neighbours so. 

Go back to elder times and ages past, 

And nations into long oblivion cast ; 

To old Britannia's youthful days retire, 

And there for true-born Englishmen enquire. 

Britannia freely will disown the name, 

And hardly knows herself from whence they came ; 

Wonders that they of all men should pretend 

To birth and blood, and for a name contend. 

Go back to causes where our follies dwell, 

And fetch the dark original from hell : 

Speak, Satire, for there 's none like thee can tell. 

The Komans first with Julius Ceesar came, 

Including all the nations of that name, 

Gauls, Greeks, and Lombards ; and by computation, 

Auxiliaries, or slaves of ev'ry nation ; 

With Hengist, Saxons ; Danes with Sueno came, 

In search of plunder, not in search of fame ; 

Scots, Picts, and Irish from the Hibernian shore ; 

And conqu'ring William brought the Normans o'er. 

All these their barb'rous offspring left behind, 

The dregs of armies, they of all mankind ; 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 61 

Blended with Britons who before were here, 
Of whom the Welsh ha' blest the character. 
From this amphibious, ill-born mob began 
That vain, ill-natur'd thing, an Englishman. 

These are the heroes who despise the Dutch, 

And rail at new-come foreigners so much, 

Forgetting that themselves are all derived 

From the most scoundrel race that ever lived : 

A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones, 

Who ransacked kingdoms and dispeopled towns ; 

The Pict and painted Briton, treacherous Scot, 

By hunger, theft, and rapine, hither brought ; 

Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes, 

Whose red-hair'd offspring ev'ry where remains ; 

Who, join'd with Norman-French, compound the breed 

From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed ; 

Dutch, Walloons, Flemmings, Irishmen, and Scots. 

Vaudois and Valtolins, and Hugonots, 

In good Queen Bess's charitable reign, 

Supplied us with three hundred thousand men. 

Religion — God, we thank thee — sent them hither, 

Priests, Protestants, and Devil, all together ; 

Of all professions, and of every trade, 

All that were persecuted or afraid ; 

Whether for debt or other crimes they fled, 

David at Hackelah was still their head. 

The offspring of this miscellaneous crowd 

Had not their new plantations long enjoy'd, 

But they grew Englishmen, and rais'd their votes 

At foreign shoals of interloping Scots. 

The royal branch 1 from Pictland did succeed 

With troops of Scots and scabs from North-by-Tweed ; 

The seven first years of his pacific reign 

Made him and half his nation Englishmen. 

Scots from the northern frozen banks of Tay, 

With packs and plods, came whigging all away, 

1 James I. 



62 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Thick as the locusts which in Egypt swarm'd, 
With pride and hungry hopes completely arm'd ; 
With native truth, diseases, and no money, 
Plunder 'd our Canaan of the milk and honey. 
Here they grew quickly lords and gentlemen, 
And all their race are true-born Englishmen. 

In English ale their dear enjoyment lies, 

For which they '11 starve themselves and families. 

An Englishman will fairly drink as much 

As will maintain two families of Dutch ; 

Subjecting all their labour to their pots, 

The greatest artists are the greatest sots. 

The country poor do by example live ; 

The gentry lead them, and the clergy drive. 

What may we not from such examples hope ? 

The landlord is their god, the priest their pope. 

A drunken clergy and a swearing bench 

Has giv'n the Eeformation such a drench, 

As wise men think there is some cause to doubt, 

Will purge good manners and religion out. 

These few extracts from the work afford a fair sample of the 
True-horn Englishman — a work which must have been highly- 
grateful to the insulted King, who was run down and attacked by 
every puppy of a ballad-writer or ballad-singer as the adventurer 
Dutchman ; but after De Foe's work appeared the words " true-born 
Englishman " were never heard of again, either in prose or poetry. 
Whether William ever rewarded De Foe, especially for this perform- 
ance, is not known, but I believe he did ; and, moreover, cultivated 
his acquaintance so as to receive him frequently, when De Foe was 
projecting something new for William's benefit, such as urging on the 
union with Scotland ; suggesting the raising of taxes so as to press 
little upon the perceptions of the people ; the making peace with 
France, and carrying out a system of free trade with that country: 
for Daniel Foe of 1689 was, as far as his knowledge would carry 
him, as much a free-trader as ever Uichard Cobden or John Bright 
or George Wilson has been at a later period. De Foe's grand project 



LIFE OF DE FOE. DO 

with William was stopping the Spanish-plate fleet, with all its 
bullion on board, in the West Indian seas, on its way home ; and, 
besides this, manning the navy so as not to outrage British liberty ; 
and victualling the navy, too; these were all favourite projects with 
him, and frequently brought him to personal interviews with his sove- 
reign, and with the Queen too, who once showed him her new flower- 
garden, with its improvements and alteratons, at Kensington. DeFoe 
often saw William in private, and always spoke of him as the best 
of friends, the best of masters, and the most patriotic of kings. 

From a Satire against Hypocrites, published in 1689 anonymously, 
against some congregation of Protestant dissenters — perhaps Dr. 
Burgess — in which one " Daniel" appears to be the principal object 
of attack, if not the only one, it would appear that this " Daniel," 
whom I readily accept as our hero, was in trouble and confinement 
in Newgate. I will give one or two specimens to show the animus 
of the author, and the importance of this " Daniel " in the opinion 
of this scurrilous libeller — perhaps I/Estrange, Ned Ward, or Tom 
Browne, afterwards Dr. Browne 1 — 

" Beloved, I shall here crave leave to speak 

A word," lie cries, and winks unto the weak. 

" The words are these : Make haste, and do not tarry, 

But unto Babylon thy dinner carry ; 

There doth young Daniel want in the den, 

Thrown among lions hy hard-hearted men. 

Here, my beloved ;" and then he reaches down 

His hand, as if he 'd catch the clerk by th' crown. 

Not to explain this precious text amiss, 

DanieVs the subject, hunger th' object is. 



1 "Whether the Daniel alluded to means Daniel Burgess or Daniel De Foe, is not 
quite clear ; for both were persecuted by the same writers and for the same reason, 
and both were in trouble in money matters at one time or other during their lives. A 
specimen of the political writers in verse may not be unacceptable, for we shall have 
prose enough before we have done with our subject. Butler, with his Hudibras, was 
the great pattern in this line, which we might emphatically call " light reading," and 
Ned Ward perhaps was the champion pen in the style ; while in prose, where coarse 
asseveration was more in request than delicacy of feeling or truth, Oldmixon would 
decidedly carry off the palm of victory against all competitors. As a liar in prose, 
Oldmixon was unrivalled. 



64 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Again : — 

Where the black dog of Newgate you have seen, 
Hair'd like the Turk, with eyes like Antichrist, 
He doth and hath the brethren long entic't ; 
Claws like a Star-Chamber bishop, black as hell, 
And doubtless he was one of those that fell. 
Judism, I say, is uglier than this cur, 
Though there were nothing could be uglier. 
Thrown among lions by hard-hearted men, 
Here Daniel is the church, the world 's the den. 
By lions are meant monarchs, kings of nations, 
Those worse than heathenish abominations. 

I am not aware that any of Daniel De Foe's biographers place 
him in Newgate in confinement at so early a period as 1689, the 
year after the landing of William III. of glorious memory; but 
certain it is that some "Daniel" connected with a religious com- 
munity, sect, or congregation, was in Newgate at that time for some 
offence, most likely political. It is admitted by De Foe's biographers 
that at this time he was quiet in the political strife ; if this be so, 
the probability is that the verses above were written upon him, and 
not on Dr. Daniel Burgess. It is certain, also, that he was absent 
on his Spanish trade and Portuguese adventures, which do not 
speak much for the home trade formerly carried on at Freeman's 
Court, Cornhill, the hosiery concern. I fear the closing the hosiery 
business put Daniel, the body-guardsman, into confinement — a fact 
known, perhaps, to Ned Ward or others of that class at the time; 
and, moreover, it might be in this time of retirement when he 
repaired to Bristol, and resided there some months, and soon 
attracted the notice of the quiet citizens by appearing only on Sun- 
days, and then dressed, after the fashion of the times, as a gentle- 
man, with fine flowing wig, lace ruffles, and a sword. This Sunday 
exhibition obtained for him the appellation of ' ' the Sunday gentle- 
man." If he had appeared on an ordinary week-day, he probably 
would have been arrested ; but the law allowed him the liberty of 
his sabbath, and freedom from arrest on that sacred day. If this 
Bristol story be true, it shows the man of genius, who must maintain 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 65 

the appearance of the gentleman under any or every circumstance, 
however painful. I once heard of a successful man of this class, 
who always worked upon the principle of humouring the world by 
truckling to its foibles, and placed great value upon a good exterior; 
his motto was, " Appearances must be kept up, for to be poor and 
seem poor was the devil all over." This man was a great man in 
his way, and was the father of a son still greater, though in another 
sphere. 

De Foe, along with other honest traders, suffered greatly from the 
tricks of fraudulent creditors, which tricks he assiduously exposed, 
occasionally at this time, but at a future period, 1704, from week 
to week and from month to month, in his Review, and also in his 
Essay on Projects. His reiterated warnings and attacks upon the 
system had the desired effect at last, and induced Parliament to 
redress the nuisance, by ( ' An Act for the more effectual Relief of 
Creditors in cases of Excesses, and for preventing Abuses in Prisons 
and pretended Privileged Places," which act scoured out the Mint 
and the "Whitefriars — places notorious as sanctuaries for all the 
broken, desperate characters of the metropolis. This act passed in 
the eighth and ninth of William III. Thanks to Daniel De Foe 
for this amendment of the laws of bankruptcy ; for it was principally 
his doing, by his writings on the subject. 

About this period he was sent for, without any application on his 
part, when seventv miles from London, to be accountant to the 
commissioners of the glass duty, in which service he continued till 
the termination of their commission. The appointment was made 
in 1695, probably through the intervention of his friend Dal by 
Thomas, afterwards Sir Dalby Thomas, one of the commissioners ; 
and it ceased, as just stated, upon the suppression of the tax by act 
of Parliament, August 1, 1699. 

On the suppression of the glass duty in 1699, or a little afterwards, 
De Foe became secretary to a tileyard concern — a pantile business, 
at Tilbury, in Essex; and this office he filled for several years. 
His political detractors used to compare his potworks at Tilbury to 
the potworks in Egypt; but said that Daniel was not so much deficient 
in straw as wages. The Dutch were his competitors, and they beat 

5 



66 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

him out of the market ; for his pantiles were not liked by the public. 
The whole concern was a failure, and poor De Foe lost .£3000 by 
the breaking up of the concern. The Dutch had supplied the London 
market for generations, and knew the pattern, for there is such a 
thing as a pattern in pantiles. The Dutch could stiffen or weaken 
their clay at pleasure, by the introduction of sand or marl ; but De 
Foe's company would probably take the Thames silt at Tilbury, and 
look to nothing but saving coals in the burning, by mixing the clay 
with coal -ashes or small cinders, which would make the tiles very 
porous, and so not fitted for turning the wet. I have been a tile- 
maker myself, and about as successful as De Foe, but the Dutch did 
not ruin my trade. I have surrounding my tilery ten thousand acres 
of rich land, wanting draining, and I sell in one year as many tiles 
as will drain seventy or eighty acres. I make three hundred thou- 
sand draining tiles, and I may be three years in selling them. I have 
been in trade fifteen years, and I have made one return ; and what 
is it ? — A fixed impression that Parliament should appoint a com- 
mission for inquiring into the state of landed property in England. 

The present laws affecting landed property in England are as 
great a nuisance to the British public, as the placing a couple or 
more of barges in the middle of Regent Street, London, would be 
to the carriages and pedestrians using that street. There is a 
locking-up of the resources of the powers of the soil in England 
by bankrupt pride. 

As this period was, beyond all others, a " projecting age/' De Foe, 
to encourage the mania, I suppose, wrote an essay on the subject, 
to which he must have devoted considerable time and pains ; for his 
several divisions of the subject are gone into with great minuteness 
of calculations, and his work was dedicated to Dalby Thomas, Esq., 
his former patron in the Glass-duty Office — a man who deserves to 
be known ; for he alone had the courage and manliness to patronize 
our hero publicly, and give him an office under government. The 
History of Projects, with the Tower of Babel and Noah's Ark for exam- 
ples, takes the first place or opening chapter. Projectors follow next, 
of whom De Foe says : — " A mere projector, then, is a contemptible 
thing, driven by his own desperate fortune to such a strait that he 



LIFE OP DE FOE. 67 

must be delivered by a miracle, or starve ; and when he has beaten 
his brains for some such miracle in vain, he finds no remedy but to 
paint up some bubble or other, as players make puppets talk big, to 
show like a strange thing, and then cry it up for a new invention, 
gets a patent for it, divides it into shares, and they must be sold ; 
ways and means are not wanting to swell the new whim to a vast 
magnitude ; thousands and hundreds of thousands are the least of 
his discourse, and sometimes millions ; till the ambition of some 
honest coxcomb is wheedled to part with his money for it; and 

then — 

Nascitur ridiculus mus — 

the adventurer is left to carry on the project, and the projector 
laughs at him." Joint-stock banks, on a grand national scale, 
come next; then, highways repairing, widening, &c, on a scale for 
magnitude equal to the banks, follows ; then assurance companies ; 
and next friendly societies, or sick clubs. A society or insurance 
club for seamen ; and then one for widows, each widow to receive 
£500 on burying her husband ; but discretion was to be observed in 
admitting the members ; for a young girl of nineteen marrying an 
old man of seventy, would not do for their club ; this is a funeral 
club on a large scale. A pension office comes next ; this is a sick 
club again on a larger scale, almost equal in its ramifications to the 
bank or turnpike-road scheme. Then succeed betting-offices, not 
so much on horse-racing as the gains or losses in the continental 
wars or sieges; the sum of £200,000 having been staked on the 
siege of Limerick. These siege bets formed a grand feature, as a 
new business, in the Royal Exchange. Next follows an asylum for 
fools ; and after this a charity lottery, to be set up by the authority 
of the Lord Mayor of London and Court of Aldermen, for the sup- 
port of the poor. Then bankrupts come, as I)e Foe says, " This 
chapter has come right, to stand next to that of fools ; for, besides 
the common acceptation of late, which makes every unfortunate 
man a fool, I think no man so much a fool as a bankrupt." A 
court of inquiries comes next, which appears to be a kind of Insol- 
vent Debtors' Court. Then we have academies, showing their want 
by the ordinary discourse of gentry of the day, with specimens of 

5* 



68 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

ordinary conversation, embellished with ordinary swearing. A royal 
academy for military exercises follows next, on a large scale ; then 
follows an academy for women. And, as this is one of the most im- 
portant questions that either De Foe or any other writer could go 
into, we will give full space for all his ideas on the subject. 1 will, 
as far as space allows, give his own words : — 

" I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs 
in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, 
that we deny the advantages of learning to our women. We reproacli 
the sex every day with folly and impertinence, while I am confident, 
had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be 
guilty of less than ourselves. One would wonder indeed how it 
should happen that women are conversible at all, since they are 
only beholden to natural parts for all their knowledge. Their 
youth is spent to teach them to stitch and sew, or make baubles ; 
they are taught to read indeed, and perhaps to write their names, or 
so, and that is the height of a woman's education; and I would 
but ask those who slight the sex for their understanding, what is a 
man (a gentleman I mean) good for, that is taught no more ? 

" I need not give instances or examine the character of a gentle- 
man with a good estate, of a good family, and with tolerable parts, 
and examine what figure he makes for want of education. 

u The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must 

be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear ; and 'tis manifest 

that, as the rational soul distinguishes us from brutes, so education 

carries on the distinction, and makes some less brutish than others. 

This is too evident to need any demonstration. But why, then, 

should women be denied the benefit of instruction ? If knowledge 

and understanding had been useless additions to the sex, God 

Almighty would never have given them capacities; for he made 

nothing needless. Besides, I would ask any such, what they can 

see in ignorance that they should think it a necessary ornament to 

a woman ? Or how much worse is a wise woman than a fool ? Or 

what has the woman done to forfeit the privilege of being taught ? 

Does she plague us with her pride and impertinence ? Why did we 

not let her learn, that she might have had more wit? Shall we 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 69 

upbraid women with folly, when 'tis only the error of this inhuman 
custom that hindered them being made wiser ? 

" The capacities of women are supposed to be greater, and their 
senses quicker, than those of the men ; and what they might have 
been capable of being bred to, is plain from some instances of female 
wit, which this age is not without ; which upbraids us with injus- 
tice, and looks as if we denied women the advantage of education 
for fear they should vie with the men in their improvements. To 
remove this objection, and that women mi^ht have at least a need- 
ful opportunity of education in all sorts of useful learning, I propose 
the draught of an academy for that purpose. 

" I know 'tis dangerous to make public appearances of the sex : 
they are not either to be confined or exposed ; the first will disagree 
with their inclinations, and the last with their reputations, and 
therefore it is somewhat difficult ; and I doubt a method proposed 
by an ingenious lady, in a little book called Advice to the Ladies, 
would be found impracticable ; for, saving my respect to the sex, 
the levity, which perhaps is a little peculiar to them, at least in their 
youth, will not bear constraint ; and I am satisfied nothing but the 
height of bigotry can keep up a nunnery. Women are extravagantly 
desirous of going to heaven, and will punish their pretty bodies to 
get thither ; but nothing else will do it, and even in that case some- 
times it falls out that Nature will prevail. 

" When I talk, therefore, of an academy for women, I mean both 
the model, the teaching, and the government, different from what is 
proposed by that ingenious lady, for whose proposal I have a very 
great esteem, and also a great opinion of her wit ; different, too, 
from all sorts of religious confinement, and, above all, from vows of 
celibacy. 

" Wherefore the academy I propose should differ but little from 
public schools, wherein such ladies as were willing to study, should 
have all the advantages of learning suitable to their genius. But 
since some severities of discipline more than ordinary would be absor 
lutely necessary to preserve the reputation of the house, that persons 
of quality and fortune might not be afraid to venture their children 
thither, I shall venture to make a small scheme by way of essay. 



70 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

" The house I would have built in a form by itself, as well as in a 
place by itself. 

" The building should be of three plain fronts, without any jet- 
tings or bearing work, that the eye might at a glance see from one 
coin to the other ; the gardens walled in the same triangular figure, 
with a large moat, and but one entrance. 

" When thus one part of the situation was contrived as well as 
might be for discovery, and to render intriguing dangerous, I would 
have no guards, no eyes, no spies, set over the ladies, but shall expect 
them to be tried by the principles of honour and strict virtue. 

" And if I am asked why, I must ask pardon of my own sex for 
giving this reason for it : — 

" I am so much in charity with women, and so well acquainted 
with men, that His my opinion there needs no other care to prevent 
intriguing than to keep the men effectually away ; for though incli- 
nation, which we prettily call love, does sometimes move a little too 
visibly in the sex, and frailty often follows, yet I think, verily, 
custom, which we miscall modesty, has so far the ascendant over 
the sex, that solicitation always goes before it. 

Custom with woman, 'stead of virtue, rules ; 
It leads the wisest and commands the fools ; 
For this alone, when inclinations reign, 
Tho 's virtue 's fled, will acts of vice restrain. 
Only bv custom 'tis that virtue lives, 
And love requires to be ask'd before it gives ; 
For that which we call modesty is pride : 
They scorn to ask, and hate to be denied. 
'Tis custom thus prevails upon their want, 
They '11 never beg, what ask'd they easily grant : 
And when the needless ceremony 's over, 
Themselves the weakness of the sex discover. 
If then desires are strong and nature free, 
Keep from her men and opportunity, 
Else 'twill be vain to curb her by restraint ; 
But keep the question off, you keep the saint. 

"In short, let a woman have never such a coming principle, she 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 71 

will let you ask before she complies, at least if she be a woman of 
honour." 

"A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional 
accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature with- 
out comparison : her society is the emblem of sublime enjoyments ; 
her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly; she is all 
softness aud sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight; she is every 
way suitable to the sublimest wish ; and the man that has such a 
one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be 
thankful. 

" On the other hand, suppose her to be the very same woman, 
and rob her of the benefit of education, and it follows thus : — If 
her temper be good, want of education makes her soft and easy. 

<( Her wit, for want of teaching, makes her impertinent and talka- 
tive. Her knowledge, for want of judgment and experience, makes 
her fanciful and whimsical. 

"If her temper be bad, want of breeding makes her worse, and 
she grows haughty, insolent, and loud. 

" If she be passionate, want of manners makes her termagant and 
a scold, which is much at one with lunatic. 

" If she be proud, want of discretion (which still is breeding) 
makes her conceited, fantastic, and ridiculous. 

11 And from these she degenerates to be turbulent, clamorous, 
noisy, nasty, and the devil. 

" Methinks mankind, for their own sakes, since, say what we will 
of the women, we all think fit one time or other to be concerned with 
them, should take some care to breed them up to be suitable and 
serviceable, if they expected no such thing as delight from them. 
Bless us ! what care do we take to breed up a good horse, and to 
break him well ! And why not a woman ? — since all her ornaments 
and beauty, without suitable behaviour, is a cheat in nature ; like 
the false tradesman, who puts the best of his goods uppermost that 
the buyer may think the rest are of the same goodness. 

" Beauty of the body, which is the woman's glory, seems to be now 
unequally bestowed ; and Nature, or rather Providence, to lie under 
some scandal about it, as if it was given a woman for a snare to 



72 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

men, and to make a kind of she devil of her. Because, they say, 
exquisite beauty is rarely given with wit, more rarely with goodness 
of temper, and never at all with modesty. 

" Philosophers do affirm, that the understanding and memory is 
dilated or contracted according to the accidental dimensions of the 
organ through which it is conveyed. Then, though God has given 
a soul as capable to me as another, yet, if I have any natural defect 
in those parts of the body by which the soul should act, I may have 
the same soul infused as another man, and yet he be a wise man 
and I a very fool. For example, if a child naturally have a defect 
in the organ of hearing, so that he could never distinguish any 
sound, that child shall never be able to speak or read, though it 
have a soul capable of all the accomplishments in the world. The 
brain is the centre of the soul's actings, where all the distinguish- 
ing faculties of it reside ; and it is observable, a man who has a 
narrow, contracted head, in which there is not room for the due and 
necessary operations of nature by the brain, is never a man of 
very great judgment ; and that proverb, ' A great head and little 
wit/ is not meant by nature, but is a reproof upon sloth, as if one 
should, by way of wonder, say, ' Fie ! fie ! you, that have a great 
head, but have little wit; that is strange ! — that certainly must be 
your own fault/ From this notion I do believe there is a great 
matter in the breed of men and women ; not that wise men shall 
always get wise children, but I believe strong and healthy bodies 
have the wisest children, and sickly, weakly bodies affect the wits 
as well as the bodies of their children. We are easily persuaded 
to believe this in the breeds of horses, cocks, dogs, and other 
creatures, and I believe it is as visible in men. 

" But, to come closer to the business. The great distinguishing 
difference which is seen in the world between men and women, is in 
their education ; and this is manifested by comparing it with the 
difference between one man or woman and another. 

" And herein is it that I take upon me to make such a bold asser- 
tion, that all the world are mistaken in their practice about women ; 
for I cannot think that God Almighty ever made them so delicate, 
so glorious creatures, and furnished them with such charms, so 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 73 

agreeable and delightful to man, with souls capable of the same 
accomplishments with men, and all only to be stewards of our 
houses, cooks, and slaves. 

' ' Not that I am for exalting the female government in the least ; 
but, in short, I would have men take women for companions, and 
educate them to be fit for it. 

" A woman of sense and breeding will scorn as much to encroach 
upon the prerogative of the man, as a man of sense will scorn to 
oppress the weakness of the woman. 

" But if the women's souls were refined and improved by teaching, 
that would be lost ; to say the weakness of the sex, as to judgment, 
would be nonsense ; for ignorance and folly would be no more to 
be found among women than men. I remember a passage which I 
heard from a very fine woman : she had wit and capacity enough, 
an extraordinary shape and face, and a great fortune, but had been 
cloistered up all her time, and, for fear of being stolen, had not had 
the liberty of being taught the common necessary knowledge of 
women's affairs ; and when she came to converse in the world, her 
natural wit made her so sensible of the want of education, that she 
gave this short reflection on herself: — ( I am ashamed to talk with 
my very maids/' says she ; ' for I do not know when they do right 
or wrong. I had more need to go to school than be married/ 

" I need not enlarge on the loss the defect of education is to the 
sex, nor argue the benefit of the contrary practice : it is a thing will 
be more easily granted than remedied. This chapter is but an essay 
at the thing ; and I refer the practice to those happy days, if ever 
they shall be, when men shall be wise enough to mend it." 

The above chapter — for I have given nearly the whole of it — may 
appear long or tedious to the reader ; but the subject is so very, 
so all-important to the happiness and well-being of our race, and 
delineated, too, by one of the closest observers that this country ever 
knew of all human actions, good or bad, that I thought I should not 
do my duty either to De Foe, or to those for whose especial benefit 
it was written, if I did not give the whole of it verbatim. 

The next chapter in this essay upon projects is " Of a Court 
Merchant/' a sort of legal court for the trying of all causes 



74 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

connected with commerce, to be presided over by six judges, to be 
chosen from the most eminent merchants of the kingdom, who were 
to reside in London, and who should, in short, form a court of law 
for the trial of causes ; but the whole, judge, counsel, and jury, to 
be merchants, instead of lawyers. 

The next chapter is " Of Seamen." This is a patriotic effort to 
man the navy without outraging every feeling of civilization or 
humanity by the terrors and rascalities of the press-gang. This is 
voluminous enough — equal to the assurance companies or the 
turnpike roads ; but, having borrowed so largely from the chapter 
on the education of females, at the hazard of being tiresome, I 
dare not go into it. 

William III. landed in England in 1688, and was involved in a 
war with France till 1697, when the peace of Ryswick was con- 
cluded, which gave William an acknowledgment to his title of 
King, by Louis XIV. of France ; in exchange for millions of money 
foolishly spent in support of the power of Spain in Flanders, and 
oceans of British blood. On the death of James II. at St. Germains, 
in 1701, another folly of the same kind was perpetrated by Great 
Britain's entering upon another war with France, because Louis 
the Fourteenth chose to style the Pretender, or son of James II., 
"King of England." Every preparation was vigorously entered 
upon by England for this war ; but William III., meeting with an 
accident while hunting, died in 1702, and was therefore prevented 
seeing the end of the contest, the glory, and the cost; but his 
successor, Anne, coming to the British throne, vigorously carried 
on this war against the Pretender and Louis XIV., until, in 1709, 
Louis solicited peace, and offered to acknowledge the title of Queen 
Anne to the crown of Great Britain, and to remove the Pretender 
from France. But Marlborough and the generals had influence 
enough with the English court and House of Commons to reject the 
proposal ; so the war was again prosecuted with vigour, Great Britain 
finding the necessary blood and treasure. Another attempt at peace 
was made in a few months afterwards, in 1710 ; but the glory party 
in the English court overruled the attempt, till a.d. 1711, when the 
Whigs, glory, and Marlborough lost place and power, and were 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 75 

succeeded by the Tories, who concluded the peace of Utrecht, a.d. 
1713; and these Tories, Oxford and Bolingbroke, contended for 
power and place to such a degree as to hasten the death of the 
poor Queen the following year, a.d. 1714. Poor Queen Anne ! the 
personification of " church in danger"! she fought against the 
Pretender during eleven years of her short reign ; and on her death 
the Earl of Oxford, her confidential friend and minister, was 
impeached by the Commons for favouring the Pretender; and 
Bolingbroke ran away to the Pretender's court at St. Germains, 
where he resided twelve years, to avoid the same impeachment 
which had fallen on his colleague, the Earl of Oxford. Louis XIV. 
favoured the Pretender, and so did Queen Anne; but yet tens of 
thousands of Britons could be sacrificed, and hundreds of millions 
of Britain's treasure squandered, on the question of time — when. 

So that most part of these two reigns of twenty-six years, England 
was engaged in continental wars, connected for the most part with 
James II. or his son ; and De Foe lamented this waste of blood 
and treasure as sincerely as any man in Great Britain. I dwell on 
these circumstances especially, because the fact of De Foe's disliking 
wars with France cannot be too generally known, as some of his 
proceedings were so isolated, erratic, ambiguous, if not hostile to 
all professed liberal men and liberal feelings of his time, as to cause 
him to be distrusted by those who should have been fellow-workers 
with him in the same vineyard ; and who ought to have held out 
the right hand of fellowship to one of Britain's truest of patriots 
and greatest of geniuses, instead of treating him with neglect and 
hostility ; because they did not understand him, who had studied, 
yea, lived upon, the science of politics and national questions, moral, 
civil, and religious, for forty years. De Foe was a great moral and 
political philosopher, and the world did not know it. They knew 
he had been a hosier and a pantile-maker, and writer of books, but 
he had made no money. He had run away more than once from 
his creditors ; he had been bankrupt ; he had been in gaol ; he had 
been a fool ; but, fool as he was, the foundation of his folly was a 
love of peace with France, and a dislike to that system of expensive 
continental wars which have laid this country under the obligation 



76 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

of eight hundred millions of pounds sterling of debt. De Foe stood 
alone against the flowing tide of national folly — glory and pride — 
yes ; and was lost ! 

Poor William III.'s religion was the source of great contention 
and strife among his new subjects; for he was, in their unthankful 
eyes, a broad-set Dutch Presbyterian, who wished to reign over his 
new subjects for their benefit as men, irrespective of their several 
sects in religious matters. He did not wish to know whether a man 
belonged to church or chapel — high church, low church, or con- 
venticle — to him it was all the same; but to his subjects owning 
church property, or seeking church preferment, it was a mortal 
offence and disappointment ; for theirs was a strife for the life— the 
archbishoprick of Canterbury, or the meanest curacy in the land of 
the annual value of £40. The whole church- and-state contest of 
this whole reign was a question of money — a contest for the keeping 
one half of the people out of power, in order that the great church 
prizes might be divided among a less number of aspirants or com- 
petitors. During the last few years of William's reign the most 
bitter strife was carried on between church and dissent, during 
which contest the most violent pamphlets were published on each 
side. The church only opposed dissent so far as it was politic or 
safe for her to oppose it, though she had no power to keep within 
due bounds her champions, aspiring curates of the Sacheverell class, 
or indiscreet superannuated archdeacons and testy deans, with a 
host of paid pamphleteers, as Leslie, L'Estrange, Drake, Swift, 
Pope, Ned Ward, Oldmixon, and others — a host of writers, from 
the pompous folio to the penny broadsheet. She allowed a sort of 
occasional conformity, which left some of the richest merchants 
of the city of London, although dissenters, to accept civic offices 
of importance in the eyes of wealthy ambition, such as alderman, 
sheriff, or lord mayor, by their being Church-of-England men, two 
or three Sundays in each year, when they went to receive the sacra- 
ment — or, if you like the term, " their certificate of qualification for 
magisterial office " ; for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was 
nothing more nor less than a passport to office in the city of London 
to wealthy dissenting bankers and merchants — a system of ff playing 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 77 

bo-peep with the Almighty" which De Foe reprobates ; for it " is 
such bantering with religion as no modest Christian can think of 
without horror. " Perhaps the great mass of the dissenters would 
rather like this connection with the Guildhall and the Mansion 
House, their chapel and the alderman's pew in it, and the alder- 
man's subscription to the new organ, or new school, or gallery, or 
the singers; chapel debt, or minister's salary; besides, there is some- 
thing very respectable in the idea that the sheriff or lord mayor of 
London belongs to our chapel — that he is a member of the church ; 
or one of the deacons. Many dissenters would not approve of this 
conformity for civic office; most of them would not; yet it might 
be only a matter of opinion, and nothing to them, so long as they 
minded their own business in this life, and lived near to God, to 
prepare them for a better. The great incentive to all this strife was 
Sir Humphrey Edwin, a Presbyterian, who was elected lord mayor 
on September 29, 1697, and who during his mayoralty attended 
church on one part of the day ; and Pinners' Hall, his meeting-house, 
on the other. All this was very well, and nothing particular about 
it, excepting that on one unlucky afternoon he took with him, as 
lord mayor, all the regalia of his office, which was the occasion of 
all the strife noticed above. De Foe entered the lists against occa- 
sional conformity, and offended, by his sincerity and plainness of 
language, all the great ones of the earth, and the ministers too, who 
supported the great aldermen in their proceedings. When the higher 
authorities were offended with De Foe, it is easy to perceive how 
the lower members of the congregation could be acted upon, through 
the deacons and leading members; so that De Foe was not acknow- 
ledged by the great body of the dissenters in the contest. De Foe 
knew more of the dissenting machine, and its power for good or 
evil, than all your trimming aldermen, sheriffs, and lord mayors, put 
together; but yet he was powerless for organization on a large 
scale. He could print one, two, or three spirited pamphlets on the 
subject, which everybody would read, and he could reply again and 
again to the answers ; he would carry his readers along with him, 
for he was all-powerful as a writer ; but yet he was powerless for 
organization. 



78 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Poor De Foe ! he had been in the hosiery trade ! and had failed, 
and perhaps had run away, and been in gaol more than either once 
or twice ! He had written on all subjects, with the greatest ability, 
and his name had been borrowed for the sale of other men's pro- 
ductions ; and, perhaps, even at this early period of his career, 
hawked about the streets. He had written on dissenters, and 
offended them by his writings; so that he was thoroughly dis- 
gusted with their supineness or want of principle or energy. He 
knew the power of the dissenters, as the great moneyed interest of 
the kingdom; but he seemed to possess the knowledge for himself; 
for he could not bring it to bear for any organization of the entire 
body, as the moneyed interest of the nation. He, no doubt, found 
at every turn, as we find, certain politicians of the old school. No 
doubt he did this in 1697 ; and we find the same old- school class in 
1859; and our great-grandchildren will, in 1930, find their old- 
school politicians too. What are these men? — Sun -worshippers — 
cowards in politics — shufflers — superannuated men who, for some 
connection with the powers that be, in one degree or other, are cut 
out of the main ranks, and left cripples in the rear, on all important 
advances of active principles. De Foe was a general without an 
army, for he had quarrelled with it ; but he lived to see the day 
when he took revenge of his cowardly troops, who would receive 
neither his instruction nor obey his commands : he thought them 
cowards, and he lived to see the day when he treated them as such ; 
and called them so. 

At this time, 1697, the reduction of the army was again agitated, 
both in and out of Parliament, for the old object — insulting the best 
of kings, and serving the exiled James ; and pamphlets were pub- 
lished in full force on both sides, Mr. Trenchard taking the lead in 
a patriotic address, entitled An Argwnent, showing that a Standing 
Army is inconsistent with a free Government, and absolutely de- 
structive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy. This pam- 
phlet was replied to by Lord Somers, but to little effect ; the public 
sympathy running altogether in favour of Trenchard, his arguments 
and principles. De Foe came to the rescue, with An Argument , 
showing that a Standing Army, with consent of Parliament, is not 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 79 

inconsistent with a free Government. Trenchard replied again; 
and another pamphlet, attacking Trenchard's pamphlet with vio- 
lence, appeared ; which was attributed to De Foe, though written 
anonymously. 

I find, in The Ballad, or some scurrilous Reflections in Verse, 
written evidently by De Foe, some allusions to William's army 
being reduced to seven thousand men by the House of Commons ; 
it professes to be a Ballad sung by the people, and the answer sung 
by the House of Commons : — 

22. 
You should find out some other word 

To give the crown's accepter; 
To call him king would be absurd, 
For though he '11 seem to wear the sword, 

"lis you have got the scepter. 

Answer. 
Senates think Jit, for public good, 

To bridle regal power, 
And make kings act as monarchs should 
That spare their subjects' wealth and blood, 

Not those they rule, devour. 

23. 

And now your wealth is smoaking hot 

Against the Kent petition, 
No man alive can tell for what, 
But telling truths which pleas'd you not, 

And taxing your discretion. 

Answer. 
If men of Kent petitions draw, 

And idly vote supplies, 
Instead of those who make the law, 
The Gate-house, or some Bedlam straw, 

Must serve to make 'em wise. 



80 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

24. 
If you those gentlemen detain 

By your unbounded power, 
Tis hop'd you '1 never more complain 
Of bishops, in King James's reign, 

Sent blindly to the Tower. 

Answer. 
The hislwps were close prisoners made, 

By reason of their conscience; 
But these impertinents, afraid 
A war would spoil their otoling l trade, 

Are shut up for their nonsence. 

25. 

A strange memorial too there came 

Your members to affront, 
Which told you truths you dare not name, 
And so the paper scap'd the flame, 
Or else it had been burnt. 2 

Answer. 
The House had other fish to fry, 

When legion's libel came, 
Than to sit talking o'er a lie, 
Which had been punistid, by-the-by, 

Had W author sent his name. 

26. 
Some said the language was severe, 

And into passion flew ; 
Some too began to curse and swear, 
And call'd the author mutineer ; 

But all men said 'twas true. 



1 Owling, exporting wool by moonlight, against the law of the land. 

2 By the hands of the common hangman. 



life of de foe. 81 

Answer. 
The language certainly was such 

As skew'd the writer's breeding; 
And for civility kept touch 
With those it would defend — the Dutch, 

That use such rough proceeding. 

27. 
But, oh ! the consternation now 

In which you all appear ! 
'Tis plain from whence your terrors flow, 
For had your guilt been less, you know, 

So would have been your fear. 

Answer. 
And, si/ice such falsehoods were givn out 

By those who wistid 'em evil, 
'Twas time for them to look about, 
And to prevent the rabble rout; 

Since mob 's the very devil. 

28, 
In fifteen articles you 're told 

You have our rights betray'd, 
Barter'd the nation, bought and sold 
The liberties you should uphold ; 

No wonder you 're afraid. 

Answer. 

'Five hundred articles might shew 

What malice could devise; 
But had those articles been true, 
And roorthy of a public view, 

Their votes had made 'em lies. 



82 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

29. 
And now, to make yourselves appear 

The more impertinent, 
A wise address you do prepare, 
To have his Majesty take care, 

Rebellion to prevent. 

Answer. 
Addresses, at a time when those 

They wisely represent 
Are threatnd by the kingdom 's foes, 
Who would have brethren come to blows, 

Are needful by consent. 

30. 
No doubt his Majesty will please 

To take your cause in hand ; 
Besides, the work is done with ease : 
Full seven thousand men he has, 

The nation to defend. 

Answer. 

His Majesty has taken care 

To guard us at their motion, 
And where we 've fleets without compare, 
Seven thousand men are very fair, 
When they command the ocean. 

31. 
One hundred thousand heroes more 

Do our train'd bands compose ; 
If foreign forces should come o'er, 
Plant them and you upon the shore, 

How bravely you '1 oppose. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 83 



Answer. 

There '<s no great likelihood appears 

Of foreigners* invasion, 
Since Roote around the Channel steers, 
And troops enough to quell those fears, 

Are ready on occasion. 

After De Foe had disposed of all his powers of writing on the 
truckling- of the dissenters in using the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper as a qualification for office ; and offended the leading mem- 
bers, lay and clerical, by his powers of argument on this question ; 
and when he had written in defence of a standing army with con- 
sent of Parliament, and also answered Mr. Trenchard's pamphlet 
against all standing armies, — when he had done all this, and found 
a lull of repose, he turned his attention to another subject — the 
dissolute morals of the nation, and published the Poor Man's Plea, 
commencing with — " In searching for a proper cure of an epidemick 
distemper, physicians tell us 'tis first necessary to know the cause of 
that distemper, from what part of the body and from what ill habit 
it proceeds ; and when the cause is discovered, it is to be remedied, 
that the effect may cease of itself; but, if removing the cause will 
not work the cure, then indeed they proceed to apply proper reme- 
dies to the disease itself, and the particular part afflicted/ ' 

Again: — "In King James I/s time, the court affecting some- 
thing more of gallantry and gaiety, luxury got footing ; and twenty 
years of peace, together with no extraordinary examples from the 
court, gave too great encouragement to licentiousness. If it took 
footing in King James I.'s time, it took a deep root in the reign of 
his son ; and the liberty given the soldiery in the civil war dispersed 
all manner of prophaneness throughout the kingdom. That Prince 
(James I.), though very pious in his own person and practice, had 
the misfortune to be the first king of England, and perhaps in the 
world, that ever established wickedness by law. By what unhappy 
council, or secret ill fate, he was guided to it, is hard to determine ; 
but the Book of Sports, as it was called, tended more to the vitiating 

6* 



84 LTFE OF DE FOE. 

the practice of this kingdom, as to keeping the Lord's Day, than all 
the acts of Parliament, proclamations, and endeavours of future 
princes has done, or ever will do, to reform it." 

"After the restitution of King Charles II., when drinking the 
King's health became the distinction between a Cavalier and a 
Roundhead, drunkenness began to reign, and it has reigned almost 
forty years. The gentry caressed this beastly vice at such a rate, 
that no companion, no servant, was thought proper unless he could 
bear a quantity of wine; and to this day, 1698, His added to the 
character of a man as an additional title, when you would speak 
well of him, He is an honest drunken fellow, as if his drunkenness 
was a recommendation of his honesty." 

Again : — " The further perfection of this vice among the gentry 
will appear in two things : that His become the subject of their 
glory, and the way of expressing their joy for any publick blessing. 
' Jack/ said a gentleman of very high quality, when, after the debate 
in the House of Lords, King William III. was voted into the vacant 
throne — l Jack, 3 says he, i God damn ye, Jack, go home to your lady, 
and tell her we have got a Protestant King and Queen ; and go make 
a bonfire as big as a throne, and bid the butler make ye all drunk, 
ye dog.' Here was sacrificing to the devil, for a thanksgiving to 
God." 

Such was the state of public manners when De Foe wrote his 
essay for their reformation, in the reign of William III., a.d. 
1698. 

After the conclusion of the peace of Ryswick, the Whigs and 
Tories in the House of Commons had full leisure to turn all their 
attention to their own domestic contentions for place, honour, and 
power ; and, had it not been for the personal character of William, 
the very nation of Great Britain might have been swept from the 
map of Europe as a nation, through these political contentions. 
Honour and principle were never at so low an ebb as at this time ; 
so much so, that poor insulted William, stripped of his old com- 
panions in arms, his Dutch guards, wounded in spirit and harassed 
to distraction in body, had serious thoughts of resigning the crown 
in disgust, and retiring to Holland, his native country. What the 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 85 

manners of the country were, such were the principles ; for there 
was scarcely an honest man, as a public character, in the king- 
dom. The whole nation were what the Stuarts had made them — 
and left them ; and they never would have asked William to take 
their part, but that James was helping himself, and the church ivas 
in danger. 

At this time the King of Spain, though under forty years of age 
and without heirs, was likely to die; his kingdom was claimed 
by members of the House of Austria, and also by France, and a 
general war in Europe was threatened in consequence. William, 
along with the Dutch, exerted themselves as they best could to ward 
off the threatened disaster by a treaty for dividing the kingdom of 
Spain between the two families; and this, too, before the Spanish 
throne was vacant by the death of the King, which of course gave 
great offence to the whole Spanish nation. Louis XIV., who 
wanted the whole for his grandson the Duke of Anjou, the second 
son of the Dauphin, although a party to the partition treaty, fo- 
mented the discontents in Spain, and induced the Spanish grandees 
and King, with the consent of the Pope, to allow the King to leave 
by will, the whole kingdom of Spain in Europe and in America to 
Louis's grandson the Duke of Anjou, to the entire exclusion of 
the house of Austria. This was done, and all was ferment and 
contention in England, France, Spain, and Austria. Cunning- 
ham, in his History of Great Britain, thus refers to the subject : 
— "All people spake of it in England without any guard or 
moderation. Several dull pamphleters also attacked that treaty 
with violence and scurrility, reproaching the King's councils, and 
shewing the French monarch what advantage he might make of 
the commotions in England. Among these was Dr. Davenant, 
and other necessitous persons, without money, without hopes, and 
who had no other view but to make their fortunes out of the 
troubles of their country and public revolutions." Poor William 
was traduced on all sides, as if he could prevent the kingdom of 
Spain from being left without heirs — as if he were the cause that 
the King of Spain died without children. What could he do in the 
matter, but attempt to divide the evil, rather than allow one power 



86 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

to take and keep the whole, or involve the whole of Europe in 
the dispute, and with it in a protracted war. 

In this woful state of national affairs, — for the nation had been 
plundered to a great degree by Marlborough and his party, the 
Whigs, in the last war,— which war had been carried on far too long 
for the real or true interests of Great Britain, — well, on this pros- 
trated position of national principle, De Foe thus writes in his 
Review, some years after this date ; for poor William's memory was 
traduced and blackened for this partition treaty long after his death : 
" It has been the mode of late, of both parties, to censure the wis- 
dom and management of King William; though it is by that wisdom 
and management that we retain the posture we are in, to censure 
him; and Heaven, that was witness to his sincerity, and gave him 
wisdom above his equals, is visiting us for the insolence offered 
to his memory, by bringing us to seek refuge in that very treaty, 
which we would, if we could, lower the price of, and undervalue to 
posterity." 

De Foe at this time wrote a pamphlet, entitled " The Two Great 
Questions Considered : 1 . What the French King will do with 
respect to the Spanish Monarchy ? 2. What Measures the English 
ought to take." As a specimen of this work we will take the 
following passages : — 

" If the French get the Spanish crown, we are beaten out of the 
field as to trade, and are besieged in our own island. And never let 
us flatter ourselves with our safety consisting so much in our fleet ; 
for this I presume to lay down as a fundamental axiom, at least as 
war is carried on of late, that it is not the longest sword, but the 
longest purse that conquers. If the French get Spain, they get the 
greatest trade in the world into their hands ; they that have the 
most trade, will have the most money ; and they that have the most 
money, will have the most ships, the best fleets, and the best armies ; 
and, if once the French master us at sea, where are we then?" 

Some apology is, perhaps, required from me, for the slight notice 
taken of the above important works of De Foe, on this great agitated 
question — the Partition Treaty : a question which caused more dis- 
cussion and contention for years, than any other subject in De Foe's 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 87 

time; for this was not an English or a Scotch question, but a 
European one — involving the interest of Spain, France, Austria, 
Italy, and all Roman Catholic powers, small or great, on the one 
hand; and Great Britain, Holland, and the German Protestant 
states, on the other. For me to enter into all the spirit of these 
national contentions after the lapse of one hundred and sixty years, 
would be impossible, and, if possible, would be unadvisable ; for, to 
do it effectually, I must invoke the shade of Sir Walter Scott for 
another additional labour of another twenty volumes duodecimo, on 
De Foe. I cannot do this, therefore I must get on as I can, and 
the public must bear with me, considering that I am not going to 
give a new edition of Bonn's General Catalogue, with notes; to 
devote five or more volumes to the article De Foe. There are two 
hundred works which I ought to bring under notice, and some too 
important for the man's reputation as a religious, moral, or political 
winter, to be dispensed with. Some of De Foe's works never were 
understood, for he worked alone, and on his own judgment and 
responsibility, and so was never appreciated. But if I can quote or 
explain any of the publications which are likely to throw light on 
any doubtful, dark, or ambiguous conduct of this man, it is my duty 
to do it, and I will do it ; and this will be my only reason for going 
into some subjects, which, to the general reader, may appear dull, 
tiresome, or prolix. 

The next tract, of twenty-nine pages (which was written at this 
time, or a.d. 1700), was The Danger of the Protestant Religion 
from the present Prospect of a Religious War in Europe. 

The object of this pamphlet was to prevent, by a combination of 
Protestants in Europe, the union of the crowns of Spain and France 
in one family, and that a Catholic family; to the danger of the 
Protestant interests in Europe. 

To avoid which danger, De Foe recommends supporting the 
Emperor of Austria's claim to the crown of Spain; and this to 
be done by the English, the Dutch, and such Protestant powers as 
could be brought into the league, either with men or money. The 
outcry in England was so great against a standing army, that 
nothing could induce the English to raise one ; therefore De Foe 



88 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

writes, " If, therefore, we do not think it safe to trust our own 
people, never let us desert the Protestant cause ; for Germany and 
Swisserland are inexhaustible storehouses of men. If you will but 
assist the Protestants with money, 'twill be the same thing, or if 
we assist the Emperor at this time, it may be the same thing ; for 
prevention is all one as execution, or rather the better of the two." 
England and Holland, and part of Austria, represented the Protestant 
interest of Europe; while France, Spain, and certain other Italian 
and German states, represented the Catholic powers, which powers 
De Foe did not wish to see strengthened by Spain being united 
with France in one family — that of the Bourbons. 

Again : — " I have said already, our way is to crush the confede- 
racies of the Papists ; and if I do say, that the only way to do so is 
to prevent the crown of Spain descending by will to a prince of the 
house of Bourbon, and that prince marrying a daughter of the 
house of Austria, I shall believe I am in the right, till I can hear a 
better method proposed. This union is much easier prevented than 
it will be dissolved : treaties and alliances may disappoint it now ; 
whereas armies and fleets will hardly defeat it afterward ; if the 
house of Bourbon and Austria unite, and conform the interests of 
their dominions, they can have nobody to bend their arms against 
but the Protestants or the Mahometans." 

At the dissolution of Parliament, a.d. 1700, De Foe wrote his 
Six Distinguishing Characters of a Parliament Man ; and, among 
other things he states, that c< Former kings would stand still, and 
see the French overrun Flanders, and ruin our Protestant neigh- 
bours, though the Parliament and people have entreated them to 
assist them, and save Flanders from the falling into the hands of 
the French. Now, we have a King who solicits the people to enable 
him to preserve Flanders from falling into the hands of the French, 
and to stand by and assist our Protestant neighbours ; and we, on 
the contrary, are willing to see the French and Popish powers unite 
and possess Flanders, and everything else, and glad the Dutch are 
in danger to be ruined ; nay, so willing are we to have the States- 
General destroyed, that ( Damn the Dutch ! ' is become a proverb 
among us." And, among other points to be observed, he says, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 89 

" The House of Commons is not a place for fools. The great affairs 
of the state, the welfare of the kingdom, the public safety, the 
religion, liberties, and trade, the wealth and honour of the nation, 
are not things to be debated by green hands. There has always 
been a sort of gentlemen in the House called ( the dead weight/ 
who vote as the ignorant freeholders in the country do — just as the 
landlord, the justice, or the parson directs. So these gentlemen, 
understanding very little of the matter, give their vote just as Sir 
Such-a-one does, let it be how it will ; or just follow such a party, 
without judging of the matter." 

In this tract De Foe gives a good deal of advice on remedies for 
Stuart influences, which is very good, but not very clear to readers 
who are not intimately conversant with Stuart history. Therefore 
I will take the liberty of giving, in my own language, the influences 
to be corrected by a Parliament working on Protestant principles, 
and legislating for a Protestant people. 

Be it understood, then, that both Charles II. and his brother, 
James II., were pensioners of Louis XIV., and under the direct 
influence and guidance of Cardinal Mazarin, that King's minister ; 
and were made to act in subservience to French politics in conti- 
nental Europe. This was done till James II. began to melt down 
church cups and spoons, and then "the church was in danger/-' 
When James had to run away, and allow William Prince of Orange 
to assume the reins of government. Then French influences, and 
French pensions, and French dictation, in English matters, were 
attempted to be snapped at once ; but it took William ten years of 
bloody continental wars, with a sacrifice of 300,000 of English Pro- 
testants, with a countless loss of treasure in ships, merchandise, or 
goods ; general trade with continental states, taxes, bad debts, high 
prices, bankruptcy, and destitution, always following in the wake of 
such a state of things — it took all these, before Louis XIV. could 
be brought to acknowledge William III. as King of England. 

Charles I. married a French wife, and with her adopted French 
principles; and his son, Charles II., was supplied with a French- 
woman (the Duchess of Portsmouth) by Madame de Maintenon, 
the mistress of Louis XIV. and Cardinal Mazarin, the French 



90 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

minister; and that woman was brought to this country by the 
Duchess of Orleans, the King's sister, for the express purpose of 
working the English court, in subserviency to French interests; 
which she faithfully did for her French pay, during the lifetime of 
Charles II. 

As an illustration of what I have written above, De Foe writes — 
" Former kings have been addressed by their Parliaments to make 
war against France, and money given by millions to carry it on ; 
and have had their money spent, and no war could be had." No ! 
Charles and the Duchess of Portsmouth had spent the money; and 
when Dunkirk was sold to the French for £400,000, through this 
influence, they also spent the money between them. 

What does De Foe write of William's conduct in such circum- 
stances ? — " Now we have a King that has fought our battles in 
person, and willingly run through all the hazards of a bloody war, and 
has been obliged to use all the persuasions possible to bring us to 
support him in it." Again : — " Formerly we had kings who did as 
they pleased ; now we have a King who lets us do what we please." 

Speaking of the French King obtaining the Spanish crown for 
his grandson by will and testament, in the face of the league which 
he had ratified and exchanged, he adds, " This he would not have 
ventured to have done had the English been in a capacity to have 
possessed Flanders, and to have appeared at sea, to have protected 
the Princes of Italy in their adherence to the Emperor." 

Again : — <c In the next place, gentlemen, let your eyes be upon 
men of religion ; choose no atheists, Socinians, hereticks, Asgithites, 
and blasphemers. Had the original of the late war been under the 
reign of such a body of men, England might have made a will, and 
given her crown to the Duke de Berry; as Spain has to the Duke 
d'Anjou, and have sought protection from the French." 

De Foe's next pamphlet was The Freeholder's Plea against Stock- 
jobbing Elections of Parliament Men. 

In this he says — " Of all nations in the world, we may say, without 
detracting from the character of our native country, that England 
has, for some ages past, been the most distracted with divisions and 
parties among themselves. Union and charity — the one relating to 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 91 

our civil, the other to religious concerns — are strangers in the land ; 
and, whether we speak of difference in opinions or differences in 
interest, we must own that we are the most divided, quarrelsome 
nation under the sun. Poland is the only nation of Europe which 
can pretend to match us in this ill-natured quality; and yet, all 
things examined, Poland cannot come near us. J Twas a true 
character given of us by the wisest Princess that ever governed us, 
Queen Elizabeth, that the English were harder to be governed in 
time of peace than war. The wisdom of late Parliaments have 
established two great rivals in trade, the old and new East-Indian 
Companies. The grand question asked now, when your vote is 
required for a Parliament-man, is not, as it ought to be — Is he a 
man of sense, of religion, of honesty, and estate ? but, What com- 
pany is he for — the new or the old ? Time would fail us, and the 
paper too, to give you a list of the shopkeepers, merchants, pedlers, 
and stock-jobbers, who, with their hired liveries in coaches and six 
horses — who, God knows, never had coach or livery of their own — 
are come down into the counties, being detached from London by 
either company ; to get themselves chosen Parliament-men by those 
boroughs who are easy to be imposed upon; and who, like well- 
meaning men that know nothing of the matter, choose them upon 
the recommendation of the country gentlemen that have interest in 
the towns; which country gentlemen are prevailed upon to quit 
their own pretensions to advance theirs, but by what arguments 
we cannot pretend to determine. This is Parliament jobbing, a 
new trade, which, as we thought it the duty of English freeholders 
thus to expose, we hope an English Parliament will think it their 
duty to prevent." 

De Foe says that at this time £2000 was frequently paifl for a 
seat in Parliament ; and that even £11,000 was spent in the town of 
Winchelsea for this purpose ; and that there were agents in London 
who could fit you up at once, on the price being paid to them. 

The next pamphlet written about this time, and in support of the 
one just quoted, was The Villany of Stock-jobbers detected, and the 
Causes of the late Run upon the Bank and Bankers discovered and 
considered. De Foe appears here to be well acquainted with all 



92 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

the tricks of large speculators, brokers, bankers, or jobbers; who 
could combine by clubbing capitals for the annoying a rival com- 
pany, or the ministry of the day ; or even rendering assistance to a 
foreign power by embarrassing the credit of the nation at home, by 
the shutting up the trading capital of the country ; and so producing 
a national stagnation of trade bordering upon a general bankruptcy. 
He says, c( It has more than once been foretold that svock -jobbers 
and brokers would ruin our trade, and several times they have bid 
fair for the performance. But never was a greater wound given to 
trade in general than now ; never so unhappily timed to the dis- 
advantage both of the public revenue and the current credit of the 
nation ; nor never was there so much barefaced villany acted in the 
affairs of public trade, as there is now." He goes on to show what 
trade is ; and how carried on by cash and credit, and that credit can- 
not live long where there is no cash ; and that the two East India 
Companies acting as rivals endangered the trade of the country ; for 
if the candidates of one of these companies should be rejected by the 
citizens of London, either for Parliament or for the lord mayor's 
office, or sheriff, or any other, an immediate conspiracy was brought 
to bear upon the Bank or the Government by a buying-up of all the 
cash or bills in the country : and by writings and pamphlets depre- 
ciating foreign money, so as to render it incapable of being nego- 
tiated during the panic ; till all the large moneyed interests (out of 
this combination) were placed in the greatest state of embarrass- 
ment, and many of them ruined. 

These speculators, holding the cash, would buy exchequer bills 
and banknotes at ten to sixteen and twenty per centum discount ; 
and then, when they had made a large fortune by such purchases, 
the cash had reappeared ; and all went on as usual, till these men 
chose to try to play the same game over again ; or a rival company 
might have the start of them, when they in turn would be the 
sufferers. This work on stock-jobbery extends to seventeen pages, 
and to pick out the best paragraphs, and yet keep up the connec- 
tion of the sense, is a task of great difficulty; for the subject is 
vitally important to trade, and therefore very interesting. 

"The Old East-India Stock, by the arts of these unaccountable 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 93 

people, has, within ten years or thereabouts, without any material 
difference in the intrinsic value, been sold from £300 per centum to 
£37 per centum; from whence, with fluxes and refluxes as frequent 
as the tides, it has been up at £150 per centum again ; during all 
which differences it would puzzle a very good artist to prove that 
their real stock (if they have any), set loss and gain together, can 
have varied above £10 per centum upon the whole." 

" If it be in the power of mercenary brokers and companies to 
engross the current cash, so as to make a scarcity of money, it must 
consequently be in their power, whenever they are pleased to show 
their disesteem of the government, to prevent the advancement of 
any sum of money for the public service. And this experiment may 
be a trial of their skill, to let us see what they are able to do, if the 
City does not take care to oblige them, by choosing magistrates or 
representatives to their mind, or out of their party. 'Tis very hard 
that this sort of men, by the power of their money and the influence 
they have iif the stocks of companies, should have it in their hands 
to put a general stop to credit, cash, banks, and even the exchequer 
itself. 'Tis known their affection to the government is but very 
indifferent ; and that, generally speaking, both those two great men 
we have mentioned, and almost the whole party, who espouse the 
old company's quarrel, have put themselves in direct opposition to 
the friends of the government, and always run retrograde to the 
king and the nation's interest. That they have designed ill is 
manifest by the event; because they have done what lay in their 
power to ruin the nation's credit, in order to affect the general 
trade as well as the persons. 

" What safety can we have at home, while our peace is at the 
mercy of such men, and 'tis in their power to job the nation into 
feuds among ourselves, and to declare a new sort of civil war among 
us when they please ? Nay, the war they manage is carried on with 
worse weapons than swords and muskets. Bombs may fire our 
towns, and troops overrun and plunder us; but these people can 
ruin men silently, undermine and impoverish by a sort of impene- 
trable artifice, like poison that works at a distance ; can wheedle 
men to ruin themselves, and fiddle them out of their money by 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



the strange unheard-of engines of interests, discounts, transfers, 
tallies, debentures, shares, projects, and the devil-an'-all of figures 
and hard names. They can draw up their armies, and levy troops ; 
set stock against stock, company against company, alderman against 
alderman; and the poor passive tradesmen, like the peasants in 
Flanders, are plundered by both sides, and hardly know who hurt 
them. What will become of the honour of the English nation, if 
the principal affairs relating to the credit both of the public and 
private funds are dependent upon such vile people, who care not 
whom they ruin, nor whom they advance, though one be the 
nation's friends, and the other its enemies, and exposed to their 
particular resentments ? 

" He is a worthy patriot, and fitly qualified for a representative, 
who would join his strength to overthrow the credit of the City, and 
ruin trade, only to shew his private resentment for not being chosen 
as he thought fit to expect ! " 

" These methods, with the additions of such as the wisdom of the 
nation will find out, would effectually suppress this pernicious, 
growing party, whose dangerous practices are of such a nature that 
no man can say where they will end. Then we shall trade square ; 
honesty and industry will be the method of thriving, and plain 
trade be the general business of the exchange. Bankrupts and 
beggars have advanced the misery of stock-jobbing, and we can 
now reckon up a black list of fifty-seven persons, who, within these 
ten years past, have raised themselves to vast estates ; most of them 
from mechanics, and some of them from broken and desperate for- 
tunes, by the sharping, tricking, intriguing, scandalous employment 
of stock-jobbing. Who have been the losers, or what the general 
stock of the nation has been benefited by them, is a mystery too 
hard to be explained. Now, they ride in their coaches, keep 
splendid equipages, and thrust themselves into business ; set up for 
deputies, aldermen, sheriffs, or mayors ; but, above all, for Parlia- 
ment men, of which (with the mischievous consequences that are 
like to attend it) enough is said in the Freeholders' Plea, which I 
noted before, and to which I refer, and shall conclude with this 
short note : — 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 95 

" That I think, with submission, all honest men ought to know 
their names, in order to shun their dangerous acquaintance ; and 
the government has nothing before them but effectually to suppress 
and ease the nation of so intolerable a grievance/' 

The Address on Occasional Conformity, which De Foe had issued 
in 1697, on Sir Humphrey Edwin taking the insignia of the mayor- 
alty to Pinners' Hall Meeting-house, he again republished in 1701, 
with a preface added, and addressed to the Rev. Mr. How, the 
eminent dissenting minister, because another lord mayor, one of 
Mr. How's church or congregation, had complied with the form of 
receiving the Lord's Supper, as a qualification to his civic distinc- 
tions. De Foe is very plain and faithful, as his subject required, 
yet temperate in spirit and language; only he requests Mr. How 
to declare publicly to the world, whether this practice of alternate 
communion be allowed, either by his congregation in particular, or 
by the dissenters in general; and that Mr. John How should 
either censure the delinquent, though wearing gay clothing and a 
gold ring, or defend the custom by such arguments as he might 
think convenient ; but if he did neither of these, the world must 
believe that dissenters do allow themselves to practise what they 
cannot defend. 

Now, in noticing this preface and address, and another address 
on the same subject, by De Foe, I feel increased difficulty in con- 
densing the subject into a reasonable space; for forty pages of 
divinity is no trifling subject to grapple with, if any attention is 
to be paid to the reader of what would be hoped to be an entertain- 
ing book. To copy forty pages of contention on church and chapel, 
or even ten, will not do, I must condense into less space than 
that ; or, at least, make an effort. Well, then, two lord mayors 
of London had used the sacrament of the Lord's Supper as a quali- 
fication for civic honours, and the second belonging to Mr. How's 
church, for which De Foe attacks Mr. How publicly, though anony- 
mously, and in such terms as to place the Rev. Mr. How in a very 
unpleasant dilemma — a regular fix. 

" The whole ecclesiastical history, from the first century of the 
Christian Church, is full of instances to confirm this — that perse- 



96 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

cution made few professed Christians, but fashion made many 
painted hypocrites ; — that the prosperity of the Church of Christ 
has been more fatal to it than all the persecutions of its enemies." 

" Religion is the sacred profession of the name of God — serving 
him, believing him, expecting from him ; and, like the God it refers 
to, 'tis in one and the same object; one and the same thing, per- 
fectly indivisible, and inseparable ; — there is in it no neuter gender, 
no ambiguous article, God or Baal : mediums are impossible. 

" There is but one best (way of serving God) , and he that gives 
God two bests, gives him the best and the worst : the one spoils the 
other, Hill both are good for nothing. 

" He who dissents from the Established Church on any account 
but from a real principle of conscience, is a politick, not a religious, 
dissenter." 

" If I shall dissent, and yet at the same time conform, by con- 
forming I deny my dissent being lawful; or, by my dissenting, I 
damn my conforming as sinful." 

" Nothing can be lawful and unlawful at the same time. If it be 
not lawful for me to dissent, I ought to conform ; but if it be un- 
lawful for me to conform, I must dissent : several opinions may at 
the same time consist in a country, in a city, in a family, but not in 
one entire person ; that is impossible." 

De Foe maintains, again and again, page after page, that the 
ordinance of the Lord's Supper cannot be converted into a civil 
action, by any end, will, or design of man whatsoever ; and that the 
minister's offering you the bread, with the words, the body of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, &c, and you kneeling with reverence at the time, 
and saying Amen to the prayer, cannot be a civil action. He says, 
" It is nothing but a bantering with religion, and playing at bo-peep 
with God Almighty ; and that these lord mayors and sheriffs may 
be necessary for the preservation of the state ; but that they are 
such patriots as will damn their souls to save their country." 

The penalty of the law for not accepting public employment is 
wholly pecuniary, and the amount £500; and yet, to save this sum, 
these lord mayors will run the risk of losing their souls. De Foe 
says, ' ' A man, if he have any conscience of religion at all, it must 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 97 

be of some religion or other : if of this, it cannot be of that ; and 
if of that, it cannot be of this. As for a man being of both, he 
might as well be of neither ; and as for religion, when a man pro- 
stitutes it to interest, he might as well be Turk, Jew, Papist, or 
anything." 

De Foe was thoroughly master of his subject in all its bearings, 
and, as might be expected, received no answer from Mr. How; though 
a supercilious, impertinent reply was made, where wit, sarcasm, 
scorn, neglect, and contempt, were substituted for good sense and 
calm discussion — a very convenient refuge for established reputation 
to take shelter under ; though not very safe with such an antago- 
nist as De Foe could prove himself to be. The Rev. Mr. How was 
a popular dissenting minister, of great reputation for learning; 
he considered it beneath his dignity to reply with civility to a 
writer like De Foe ; and therefore he treated him with mirth aud 
contempt. 

After Mr. How had replied to De Foe's preface to the preceding 
pamphlet — for the preface alone was new, the work itself having 
been written three years before, when Sir Humphrey Edwin, the 
Lord Mayor, took the sword of state to Pinners' Hall Meeting- 
house — De Foe wonders that a man so absorbed in recluse studies 
should so far forsake his accustomed pursuits to attack a poor 
prefacer, and quit the argument to lash the author with his severe 
wit, for the world's amusement ; and feels sure that not only him- 
self bat the whole town felt disappointment that Mr. How, who con- 
sidered the subject beneath his notice, should spend his time on the 
impertinence of a sorry preface. 

When he addressed the preface to Mr. How, he considered that 
he had so carefully revised both it and the book, that no offence 
could possibly be taken at either; in this he had been very par- 
ticular, considering the person to whom he wrote, and of whom he 
wrote, all known and valued by him ; and he felt confident he either 
should have no reply at all, or one becoming the charity of a 
Christian, the civility of a gentleman, and the force and vigour of a 
scholar. 

But as Mr. How had so far descended as to quit the dispute, and 

7 



98 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

fall upon him personally, mixing raillery and reproach with his 
argument, which he knew would not better the cause ; this must 
be the excuse offered by De Foe for being freer with him than he 
otherwise should have been ; for he should not have presumed to 
engage even in self-defence with such an antagonist as Mr. How, 
possessed as he was ol such a character for learning, had he not 
seen his book differ so much from that reputation, and in many 
places from the truth. 

De Foe, with diffidence (called upon to animadvert upon his 
superiors in learning and office), begs to correct several mistakes 
into which Mr. How must have fallen, as to the person, tem- 
per, profession, and intention of the author; which mistakes 
alone could induce Mr. How to treat his adversary with such 
contempt. 

As to De Foe's person and temper, these he scrupulously con- 
cealed ; because it is so common in the world to answer argument 
with recrimination instead of reasoning, that this case should not 
be clogged with the meanness or imperfections of the author; he 
says, moreover, " that he need not go back for an instance to our 
Saviour, whose arguments were confronted with Is not this the car- 
penter's son ? — for Mr. How himself would have searched his cha- 
racter, to have completed his remarks with personal reflections;" 
and De Foe adds, that 6t his name could offer little strength to the 
argument, beyond the furnishing something for reproach ; and what 
would this be to the point, for the occasional conformity of dis- 
senters is not condemned or defended by the names of the authors, 
but by truth, scripture, and reason." 

" Thou ivast altogether born in sin, said the high priest and elders 
to the poor man whom Christ healed, and dost thou teach us? And 
yet this poor man was right ? and if / was right, though the most 
scandalous of libellers, is my argument the worse?" 

He again added, that he was willing to give all particulars of 
himself, and then his name would be at Mr. How's service. First, 
he possessed a strong aversion to double dealing and shifting 'in 
points of religion, and in consequence wrote for information, and to 
explode the practice ; secondly, if Mr. How's book had afforded 



LIFE OF DE FOE. WW 

that information, he should have acknowledged it with humility, in 
proportion to the pride of opposing charged against him. 

As for his personal miscarriages and misfortunes, poor De Foe 
lamented that no man had had more; which might weaken his repu- 
tation as an author, but certainly not his argument ; and he could 
affirm that God, in his merciful providence, had healed the last, and 
he hoped had pardoned the first ; and thus he was on equal terms 
in the reasoning with his opponent. 

He could perceive the beam in his own eye, and had for some 
years been a great penitent on that account ; yet even on that ac- 
count he could not consider himself excluded from inquiring into a 
scandalous proceeding in a society of which he, though unworthy, was 
a member. 

He does not presume to judge another man's conduct, where the 
case is so plain as to let that conduct speak for itself; for he calls to 
remembrance the command, that we have no more right to call good 
evil, or evil good, than we have to judge one another. 

He had thus gone over his own character, and he claims that 
truth and honesty on his side shall not be despised through his being 
so unworthy an instrument ; and he complains that Mr. How should 
censure him severely, and wrongfully too, for judging, yet presume 
to judge him. 

De Foe could not forbear entering his caveat against personal 
reflections till the argument had been disposed of, but, once rid of 
the argument, then may be the time for wit and satire upon the 
follies and afflictions of the author. Having stated these, his con- 
victions, he proceeds to Mr. How's third mistake about him, viz., 
his profession ; on which he had been treated in several pages for 
an Independent, Mr. How evidently being a Presbyterian ; but what 
had Mr. How's disputes between himself and the Independents to do 
with this question ? 

In pages 30, 31, and 32, De Foe is treated as a fifth-monarchy 
man and a leveller — a fact which could not be found in the argument ; 
and as for the scrupulous Independent kneeling at the sacrament, 
and the fifth-monarchy man seizing all property for a common stock 
for the saints, and things like these ; what are they in an inquiry 

7* 



100 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

about occasional promiscuous conformity ? — an antecedent which De 
Foe cannot find to this relative. 

De Foe affirms that he is no Independent, neither a fifth monarchy 
man, nor a leveller; and compliments his antagonist on his learning 
on these errors, so inconsistent with civil society; hut this display 
of learning on these subjects had no more to do with the case in 
dispute than a lecture on the Alcoran by Mr. How, he supposing 
him to be a Mahometan — a thing just as probable as his being a 
fifth-monarchy man, so far as his book would indicate him to 
belong to either. Poor De Foe replied, that since he was led to 
give an account of his profession, which he always hoped to be 
ready to do, he would do it in few words. He was of the same class, 
and in the same denomination of dissenters, as Mr. How, his office 
excepted ; and he was willing to be guided by, and to practise, the 
great rule of Christian charity in all its extents ; indeed, he had more 
need of the practice than Mr. How, because he had less than others, 
on account of the causes already named ; and however Mr. How, 
by wresting his words and mistaking his intentions, had pleased 
to see nothing of it, yet he was not convinced that he had broken 
the great Christian rule of charity in anything he had written. 

We come now to the fourth thing which Mr. How again mistook 
— his intentions : in rashfully and wrongfully judging him, how- 
ever cautious he had been in judging others : but, humanum est 
err are, Mr. How fell into the very error he had reproved in him 
with such severity, by judging that the principal design in De Foe's 
Preface was to reflect upon a worthy gentleman (the present Lord 
Mayor, Sir Thomas Abney) who was named therein. 

All Mr, How's assumptions were groundless, and such only as 
temper could lead him into; for the Enquiry was written three years 
before ; when Sir Humphrey Edwin was Lord Mayor, and not this 
year, when Sir Thomas Abney was Lord Mayor, and therefore could 
not be written against him. The Preface merely adds, that "the 
cause being repeated, the reprinting the Enquiry was only designed 
as a reproof to the practice, as for persons he felt quite indifferent : 
if the coat fits any body, let them wear it" 

" Secondly, if of any party, I am, and ever was, for the English 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 101 

liberty, and for putting suitable men into the magistracy ; and no 
man more likely for such a post of trust and honour ; and for such 
men I voted when voting for Sir Thomas Abney; and should again, 
if I had ten thousand voices. I respect the man for his honesty 
and ability, but I do not wish to natter him, for I neither want his 
favour, nor fear his angei\ Here, too, you are mistaken ; and these 
errors have led you to waste your time, and the reader's too, in 
making needless remarks, and answering people who never opposed 
you." 

De Foe now comes to the part of the book which respected the 
case in hand, which is the least part, and agrees with the title of 
being only a consideration of the Preface, for no answer had been 
given ; and none to give but the drawing back the curtain of words, 
which Mr. How had spread to conceal the argument. 

Having disposed of the argument, De Foe humbly requests to run 
over his antagonist's book, with as modest animadversions as his 
just defence would allow ; and he was willing to stand corrected 
when he should fail in point of decency. 

" First, you quarrel with me for hiding my name, while yours is 
exposed, and you give five pages, quoting yourself in your Preface, 
to shew how indifferent you are to controverted disputes, and your 
unwillingness to engage in this ; but, if you had answered the book 
which has been three years before the public, your name might have 
been as much concealed as my own; but this inquiry being un- 
answered, gave some people more prejudice against the dissenters 
than I could have wished ; and in bringing it again before the pub- 
lic, I knew no man more concerned, nor more capable of answering 
it, than yourself. As for my disappointment at your answering as 
you are pleased to mention, I certainly feel it ; but the disappoint- 
ment is more with your attempting the task, and doing it to so little 
purpose, than anything else I could have met with in this business. 
You boast of your indifference on these matters, but whether that 
indifference be congruous to your profession as a gospel minister, I 
shall not examine; nor shall I examine the propriety of your allow-, 
ing members of your church to conform or not to conform to the 
Established Church as they think fit ; though I am sure that, if X 



102 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

had arrived at that coldnesss in the matter myself, I should con- 
form immediately ; for I hold that schism from a true established 
church of Christ is a great sin ; and if I could conform, I ought to 
conform." 

This kind of controversy on occasional conformity for civic ho- 
nours is carried on for several pages more, between De Foe and the 
minister, Mr. How : De Foe sticking close to the argument, and 
the minister as anxious to shake off both him and his argument, 
and treat both as a matter of no concern to any one. De Foe com- 
plains of the coarse treatment he had received at the reverend 
gentleman's hands; and he complains of being threatened with 
personal violence by some friend of Mr. How, to which he coolly 
replies, "That, if he thinks himself capable to give me personal 
correction, he knows me well enough, and need never want an 
opportunity to be welcome." 

I have gone into this contention between De Foe and Mr. How 
very fully, to show that De Foe was placing himself in direct anta- 
gonism to all the leading or influential Protestant dissenters of his 
day ; he evidently was quarrelling with the whole fraternity in a 
body ; which may account for the position De Foe held with the 
dissenters at a later period of his life. 

About this time, 1701, William- s health visibly declining through 
the contentions of his Parliament — as heterogeneous a mass of 
political roguery as French influences and French money, and old 
Stuart recollections and Tory speculations, could bring together 
in one assemblage as a British House of Commons — all parties, 
Whig, Tory, patriot, and sycophant, looked around for a suc- 
cessor. Some were for Anne; some were for her pretended half- 
brother, James, commonly called the Pretender ; while others advo- 
cated the immediate introduction of the house of Hanover, to 
the total and immediate exclusion of all and everything connected 
with the house of Stuart. De Foe stood forward as the advocate 
of the son of the Duke of Monmouth, the legitimate son (as he 
believed) of Charles II. Charles II. had declared that his son, the 
Duke of Monmouth, was not legitimate; but De Foe took the 
King's word for nothing, and proposed an investigation into the 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 103 

marriage, or reputed marriage, of Charles II. and Lucy Walters, 
the mother of the Duke of Monmouth. The Duke of Monmouth 
being dead, and most of his adherents being drawn into plots and 
destroyed by James II. and his instruments of the law, of the 
Jeffrey class, such legal documents were left by Charles for James's 
security, and these duly signed, sealed, registered, and delivered 
to the law officers of the crown, that De Foe's project was never 
entertained by the nation for one moment. 

This mass of political villainy in a House of Commons forced 
forward into maturity by the money of Louis XIV. of France ; for 
now that there was no Charles II. or his brother James, and no 
French prostitute at the English court to receive French money, as 
pension or bribe, for the carrying out French objects by British 
influences, Louis was driven to tamper with the freemen and pot- 
wallopers of England, and by their means purchase a majority in 
the House of Commons, which should be subservient to French 
influences and French dictation. Such a House of Commons was 
returned ; and the grand leading attraction there was Jack How — 
a man of great ferocity of disposition and general brutality of cha- 
racter — a man pronounced by De Foe, in his Legion Memorial, to 
be a <( scandal of Parliaments." This House, so elected and so 
constituted, set about the limiting of the prerogatives of the sove- 
reign, to annoy William, then on the throne, or his late ministers, 
or the house of Hanover, or any body or thing obnoxious to French 
influences ; but, in their malignity of feeling, they stumbled upon 
the celebrated " Succession Bill " — a bill which, thrown about for 
three months, and shirked by every one, was at last palmed upon a 
Tory-madman sort of a member, such as we generally find to exist in 
the proportion of one in 650 members of the House of Commons — 
a sort of merry- andrew, fitted up by national taste for the diversion 
of the House. Well ! such was Sir John Bowles, the proposer of 
this act ; and one Tory approving of one point of revenge contained 
in it, and another approving of another — for it was all fury and 
revenge together — the thing, I say, so well fitting such several points 
of Tory taste, that the bill passed through the House of Commons 
without amendment, and was sent up to the Lords, where certain 



104 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

young members, wide awake to the rich points of malice, would 
hear of no amendments, and so the bill passed the Lords. The bill 
was returned to the Commons as passed without any amendment, 
to the astonishment and disappointment of the House; for the 
great majority who voted for that bill, and carried it, were only 
voting spite or revenge upon their King, William III., his Dutch 
friends and supporters, or his ministry and the Whigs. 

The whole act was a piece of impertinence and malignity thrown 
at William, and intended to be quashed in the House of Lords. 
This member Bowles was selected for bringing in the bill, because 
only a madman-member would be seen in such a display of malig- 
nity against royalty. The bill passed by mistake; and was the 
most important measure of William's reign for the securing of Bri- 
tish liberty. 

Such is liberty constitutional ! Passed ! and the law of the land, 
and by the most corrupt Parliament that ever sat in England, formed 
as it was of stock-jobbers in French pay, Tories of the old school, 
disappointed placemen, with Sir John Bowles, the merry-andrew of 
the House; and Jack How ! and all under the generalship of Harley, 
the Speaker of the House, who had made friends from all discarded 
politicians and disappointed men, and had organized these materials 
to that fine point, by dinners, &c, that he was master of the House, 
the Whigs, and the throne. 

This bill, important beyond most other bills, should not be 
passed over with a slight notice. No matter who were its authors 
or objects — no matter whether French or English — the bill passed ; 
and, thanks to Torydom, there it remains ! 

It provided, first, "That the future sovereign should join in 
communion with the Church of England," which was the thrust 
at William's Dutch-Presbyterian-conventicle principles : this was 
High Church ! 

Secondly, " That, in the event of a foreigner succeeding to the 
throne, the nation should not be involved in a war for the defence 
of his foreign dominions without consent of Parliament." This was 
a blow at William again, the Whigs, and the Duke of Marlborough, 
who had certainly carried on the last war all over Europe, and, for 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 105 

the most part, with English and Dutch funds, to the great dissatis- 
faction of the mass of the people of England, who had paid the cost ; 
but had not yet seen the result. This war was looked upon as a 
great Dutch job, carried on by William for his own private feelings, 
if not interests. This is what the people who had to pay thought ; 
though there might be politicians who might think that the French 
principles imported with Henrietta in Charles I.'s time, and again 
imported in the lifetime of his son, Charles II., along with the 
Duchess of Portsmouth, could not be thrown off at once without a 
great national effort, destruction and taxation. 

The third provision was, " That the same consent should be 
necessary to his leaving the kingdom." This was a blow aimed at 
William again, for his retreating to Holland for quietness from the 
contentions of British politics. 

The fourth provision was, "That all matters transacted in the 
Privy Council should be signed by those who advised them." 
This was a reproof to the ministers ; now in a minority in the 
Commons. 

The fifth provision was, " That no person born out of the kingdom 
should be of the Privy Council, or a member of Parliament, or enjoy 
any office, or have grants of land from the crown." This was a 
lash at the friend and councillor of William, Bentinck, one of 
William's Dutch countrymen ; the same who was made the Duke 
of Portland. 

The sixth provision was, " That no person enjoying place or 
pension from the crown should sit in the House of Commons." 
What a capital provision this for the protection of the liberties of 
England ! and what a pity such a provision should be repealed ! — ■ 
for it has been repealed — but yet it is never too late to mend our 
ways, and re-enact the provision again. I hope to see it; but 
whether re-enacted by Palmerston or Disraeli I would not care one 
straw; but re-enacted, by the blessing of God, it must be; and, if 
possible, in our time. 

The seventh provision enacted, " That the judges should hold their 
places during good behaviour." This would be an attack on some 
judge-appointment of William's ministry offensive to the Tories. 



106 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

The eighth provision was, "That no pardon under the great 
seal should be pleadable to an impeachment of the Commons." 
This would be an attack on William ; as interfering with his royal 
prerogative. 

Such were the restrictions in the Bill of Settlement passed by the 
Parliament of 1701; and these restrictions on royalty were at the 
time considered so outrageous, that the greatest scarecrow in the 
House had to be chosen, after a three months' seeking-up, to find 
the requisite amount of face for the work. 

Such is, and such has been, the groundwork and progress of 
British liberty and British constitution, from the time of Simon de 
Montfort, Earl of Leicester, to the present time. This revengeful 
bill — for such it really was — could not exhaust the vials of Tory 
wrath and spleen upon the fallen Whigs ; therefore articles of im- 
peachment were prepared against the Earls of Portland and Oxford, 
and Lords Somers and Halifax, the ministers, or, rather, some of 
them, for the share they had taken in the Partition Treaty. 

This was, perhaps, the most factious and iniquitous proceeding 
that could have been adopted by any House of Commons ; for these 
ministers only took such measures in the Partition Treaty as circum- 
stances allowed them to take. Of two evils, they chose the less ; 
for, in dividing Spain between France and Austria, they did better 
for Great Britain than by allowing either of these powers to seize 
the whole. I cannot conceive it possible for the ministry of 
William to have acted in any other way ; for, if they had allowed 
Austria to possess the whole, the English Parliament would have 
censured such a preserving of the balance of power in Europe ; and 
if France, already too powerful, had been allowed to take the whole, 
that never would have been sanctioned by the House of Commons ; 
and if Great Britain and Holland had attempted to place some 
third party on the throne of Spain, so long as both France and 
Austria laid claim to that kingdom by right of succession, no 
sanction from either of these last-named parties could have been 
expected to such an arrangement ; they being, each of them, the 
supposed heir to the kingdom. For this Partition Treaty, Lord 
Somers was tried by the Lords, and acquitted ; and the other trials 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 107 

were dismissed on the last day of the session. What a state of 
things ! France had seized the whole Spanish kingdom, as a legacy 
left by the last King, and had returned such a majority in the 
House of Commons of Great Britain, by means of French gold 
being distributed as bribes among the electors, that four of the 
most honourable and talented men in the kingdom were impeached 
by the British House of Commons for restricting (by treaty) France 
to one half of the kingdom of Spain, instead of the whole of it. 

Louis, with such a bought House of Commons, was enabled to 
place his grandson the Duke of Anjou on the throne of Spain : he 
did this unopposed, and by the means explained above. So long as 
the spendthrift Stuarts were on the throne of Great Britain, Louis 
the Fourteenth tampered with them ; but when a man superior to 
Louis's money (William III.) occupied the British throne, then 
Louis was driven to other game — the freemen and potwallopers of 
England — for the corrupting the House of Commons; and so sapping 
William's power in his own capital. This tampering of Louis XIV. 
with English voters ought to have been a warning to British patriots 
through all time. It has not been such ; but from this time may 
it become a matter for grave reflection to our legislators, when 
attempting to reform the House of Commons — may I add, by ex- 
tending the electoral franchise as widely as possible ; so as to make 
the electors too numerous to purchase ? 

Affairs being in a very unsettled state in the British Parliament, 
Louis took .advantage of the circumstance to march a French army 
into Flanders, to take and hold those Spanish provinces for his 
grandson the Duke of Anjou; and now King of Spain through the 
late King's will ; under pretence that no Spanish troops were ready 
for the service ; and by these forces a considerable number of the 
Dutch garrisons had been taken prisoners of war ; because Holland 
had not yet owned the grandson of Louis as King of Spain. The 
English Parliament just returned was full of Tories; and the English 
nation as full of French money — louis-d'ors and pistoles, the price 
paid to the electors for returning a House of Commons corrupt to 
the last degree ; though, of course, not organized for any preme- 
ditated French support ; but worthless in principle, and fit tools for 



108 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

any service skilful leaders might put them to. But, as it happened, 
this pack of scoundrelism fell upon the Succession Bill ; provided 
that Sophia Duchess Dowager of Hanover, grand -daughter of the 
unfortunate Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James I., should suc- 
ceed to the throne on the death of the Princess Anne, daughter of 
James II. ; and fortified that bill with such a string of provisions 
or restrictions as no patriots, however British, could have improved 
upon for the securing of British interests. Most of this happy 
legislation proceeded from malignant discontent in the breasts of 
the devoted supporters of the exiled family — a pack of rabbledom 
for good; but all-powerful for mischief, especially if that mischief 
were likely to fall upon Dutch or Hanoverian heads. Well, in this 
state of things — no forces raised to protect the coasts ; and no wish 
on the part of Parliament to allow money for the raising these 
troops to resist an invasion from France, which might take place at 
any time — something must be done by some one. By what means 
I know not, but the county of Kent was fully roused to a sense of 
its insecurity; even the ordinary farmers declaring at their markets, 
that they had sown their crops, and they expected the French would 
reap the harvest. 

Whether De Foe had any hand in raising this panic is not known ; 
but certainly he was always ready with his advice, and that always 
of a truly decisive character, for the King's benefit. De Foe did 
occasionally act confidentially in this and the following reign ; but 
whether he and somebody else might devise the scheme and carry 
it out, never will be known ; but certain it is that De Foe was inti- 
mately known to Colepeper, the principal actor in this scene of 
panic and confusion. 

That a war with France was imminent — for it had already com- 
menced in Flanders, and with Holland, our great Protestant ally — 
was clear, and yet no steps were taken in Great Britain to meet the 
threatened difficulty. All was panic and confusion on the coast of 
Kent; till the principal freeholders of the county brought the matter 
before the justices and grand jury, then assembled at the sessions 
at Maidstone, on the 29th of April. A petition to the House of 
Commons was at once resolved upon, drawn up with as little delay 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 109 

as possible, and signed by the grand jury, the chairman of the ses- 
sions and twenty-three justices, and a large number of freeholders. 
This petition was then entrusted to the care of Mr. Colepeper, the 
chairman, for presentation to the House of Commons. 

On the 6th of May, Mr. Colepeper arrived in London, accom- 
panied by his relation, Thomas Colepeper, David Polhill, Justinian 
Champneys, and William Hamilton, Esquires, all gentlemen of 
family and consideration in the county; who volunteered for 
this service. On the following day they took their petition to the 
House of Commons, where they saw one of their county members, 
Sir Thomas Hales, who at once refused to present this petition to 
the House. 

On this refusal they took the petition to the other county mem- 
ber, Mr. Meredith ; who undertook to present it, if the violence of 
the House would allow of it ; for the knowledge of this petition, its 
subject and spirit, had already produced some discussions or con- 
tentions, and was a matter of public conversation and censure, open 
and loud, among the members. 

On the mere report of such a petition being in the House, a 
stormy debate of words and loud recrimination ensued ; the whole 
bitterness and violence of which fell upon the King, and I suppose 
his Dutch Presbyterian partialities for war in Flanders against the 
French; the poor deputies from Maidstone were scarcely to be left 
alive ; and a total confiscation of all their property was loudly in- 
sisted upon by several speakers, in the contention. But all this 
bluster and violence availed nothing in the way of intimidation. 
The petition should be presented to the House; for violence had pre- 
vented that step being taken already; in fact, an attempt was made 
by certain members to prevent the form of presentation. William 
Colepeper in particular vowed and protested that the petition should 
be presented to the House; and "that if none of the members 
would do their country so much service as to present their grievances 
to Parliament in a legal petition, they would knock at the door 
of the House, and deliver it themselves." On this fearless deter- 
mination being persisted in, Mr. Meredith consented to present the 
petition ; which he did on the 8th of May. 

As intimidation availed nothing, cajolery was tried; but to as little 



110 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

effect, for the petitioners were Kentish freeholders, and were pre- 
pared to throw themselves upon the laws of the land for protection. 
This ever-celebrated petition from the county of Kent, of the 
8th of May, 1701, ran as follows : — 

" To the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses, in Parliament assembled, 

" The humble Petition of the Gentlemen, Justices of the Peace, 
Grand Jury, and other Freeholders, at the General Quarter 
Sessions of the Peace, holden at Maidstone, the 29th of April, 
in the thirteenth year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord, King 
William the Third, over England, &c. ; 

" We, the Gentlemen, Justices of the Peace, Grand Jury, and 
other Freeholders, at the General Quarter Sessions at Maidstone, in 
Kent, deeply concerned at the dangerous estate of this kingdom 
and of all Europe, and considering that the fate of us and our pos- 
terity depends upon the wisdom of our representatives in Parlia- 
ment, think ourselves bound in duty humbly to lay before this 
Honourable House the consequences, in this conjuncture, of your 
speedy resolutions and most sincere endeavours to answer the great 
trust reposed in you by your country. And in regard that, from 
the experience of all ages, it is manifest no nation can be happy 
without union, we hope that no pretence whatsoever shall be able 
to create a misunderstanding between ourselves, or the least dis- 
trust of his Majesty ; whose great actions for this nation are writ in 
the hearts of his subjects, and can never, without the blackest in- 
gratitude, be forgot. 

"We most humbly implore this Honourable House to have 
regard to the voice of the people, that our religion and safety may 
be effectually provided for ; that your loyal addresses may be turned 
into bills of supply; and that his most sacred Majesty (whose pro- 
pitious and unblemished reign over us we pray God long to con- 
tinue) may be enabled powerfully to assist his allies before it be 
too late. And your petitioners shall ever pray, Sec." 

(Signed by all the Deputy Lieutenants then present, above 
twenty Justices of the Peace, all the Grand Jury, and other 
Freeholders then there.) 



LIFE OF DE FOE. Ill 

This petition, so truthful, so full of gratitude to the best and 
most patriotic of kings, and so full of reproof to the members of 
the British House of Commons, excited, on its being read to the 
House, the greatest rage and hostility to the petitioners, and to the 
five deputies who had been sent up to London to represent the 
county at the bar of the House, if necessary. 

The five deputies were ordered to appear at the bar of the House. 
They did so; and were addressed by the Speaker (Harley) in a 
haughty, imperious tone, and then ordered to withdraw for the 
present. This was done; and contention fell into order, and a 
debate of five hours was the consequence; the whole violence of 
which, as before, fell upon the head of the best and most patriotic 
of kings, William III., of glorious memory, and his Dutch Presby- 
terian allies. 

Intimidation and cajolery were again attempted, in private, with 
the five deputies, but to no purpose ; they being determined, as 
Kentish freeholders, to throw themselves upon the law of the land 
for protection, regardless alike to either threats or promises. On 
the close of this ever- memorable debate, the Commons voted, 
"That the petition was scandalous, insolent, and seditious; tending 
to destroy the constitution of Parliament, and subvert the esta- 
blished government of this realm." 

The five deputies were then taken into the custody of the serjeant- 
at-arms, from whom they received violent, haughty, and insolent 
treatment ; and were debarred the use of such necessaries or conve- 
niences as they, county gentlemen, magistrates, deputy lieutenants 
of the county of Kent, had a right to expect. In this man's custody 
they remained till the 13th of May, when he (contrary to the 
Habeas Corpus Act), by an order of the House of Commons and 
Speaker's warrant, delivered them prisoners to his Majesty's prison 
at the Gate-house. What a pity ! that men, bedecked with the 
livery of the House of Commons, waiting-men, porters, constables, 
and valets, cannot be kept within the ordinary bounds of common 
civility ; but must so emulate the folly of the poor imbecile frog — 
blow itself out to a bursting point — because a bullock happened 
to be feeding in an adjoining pasture. Poor De Foe was fond of 



112 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

quoting iEsop's Fables ; and that of the swimming apples was a 
great favourite with him. 

At the Gate-house Prison they were placed under the custody of 
Captain Taylor, a man possessed of the feelings and sympathies of 
a gentleman; a perfect contrast to the man-in-office of the House of 
Commons ; and from him they received every kindness and accom- 
modation which lay in his power to afford. What a contrast ! — 
pomposity of office on the one hand, and the urbanity of the gentle- 
man on the other. 

Besides all this imprisonment and barbarous treatment, the 
House of Commons addressed his Majesty, to put out of the com- 
mission of the peace and the lieutenancy of the county of Kent 
these five deputies or bearers of the Kentish petition. This tyran- 
nical proceeding of the House of Commons raised throughout the 
country the question of right of arrest by the House. The prisoners 
were visited by large numbers of distinguished patriots ; and, from 
private Kentish gentlemen, they soon found themselves elevated into 
British martyrs and patriots. Their likenesses were engraved and 
circulated through the country ; verses were written and sung as 
ballads in their praise in the streets; and even Nahum Tate, the 
poet-laureate, was ordered to write a laudatory poem, entitled the 
Kentish Worthies; plainly indicating that the court sympathized with 
the prisoners. 

No sooner had the Kentish petitioners been committed prisoners 
to the Gate-house, than another incident occurred to strengthen the 
current of political agitation then raging through the land ; and this 
was, that as the Speaker of the House of Commons was entering 
the House, a woman in the street, and near the door, presented to 
him a paper, letter, or small parcel, which he received at the woman's 
hands, and passed on, without his paying such particular attention 
to her dress, stature, features, or general personal appearance, as to 
enable him to recognize her again, or lead to her recognition and 
apprehension. It was a memorial from 200,000 Englishmen, ad- 
dressed to the House of Commons, enclosed in a note to the Speaker 
himself, and threatening him with serious consequences, if he did 
not present the memorial as directed ; for the people had a right 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



113 



to present petitions to the House through the Speaker ; and that 
they, numerous as they were, could have presented the memorial 
themselves had they not been afraid of tumult, and embroiling their 
country in disorder. 

This memorial was presented to the House as directed, and of 
course created a serious sensation ; and Oldmixon, the historian, 
affirmed, in his detracting journal of the day, that Foe, the hosier, 
was the author; but it was very fortunate for De Foe that this 
Oldmixon was so constantly walking on the boundary line of truth, 
that his word went for nothing; which might be one reason why 
De Foe was not at once arrested as the author, by the redoubted 
serjeant-at-arms of the imperious Commons. 

This memorial to the House of Commons ran thus : — 

" Gentlemen, — It were to be wished you were men of that temper, 
and possessed of so much honour, as to bear with the truth, though 
it be against you ; especially from us, who have so much right to tell 
it you. But since even petitions to you from your masters (for 
such are the people who chose you) are so haughtily received, as 
with the committing the authors to illegal custody, you must give 
us leave to give you this fair notice of your misbehaviour, without 
exposing our names. If you think fit to rectify your error, you will 
do well, and possibly may hear no more of us ; but if not, assure 
yourselves the nation will not long hide their resentment. And, 
though there are no stated proceedings to bring you to your duty, 
yet the great law of reason says, and all nations allow, that what- 
ever power is above law is burthensome and tyrannical, and may be 
reduced by extra- judicial methods. You are not above the people's 
resentment. They that made you members may reduce you to the 
same rank from whence they chose you, and may give you a taste 
of their abused kindness, in terms you may not be pleased with. 

" When the people of England, assembled in convention, presented 
the crown to his present Majesty, they annexed a declaration of the 
rights of the people ; in which was expressed, what was illegal and 
arbitrary in the former reign, and was claimed as of right to be 
done by succeeding kings of England. In like manner, here follows, 

8 



114 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

gentlemen, a short abridgment of the nation's grievances, and of 
your illegal and unwarrantable practices ; and a claim of right which 
we make in the name of ourselves, and such of the good people of 
England as are justly alarmed at your proceedings. 

"1* To raise funds of money, and declare by borrowing clauses, 
that whosoever advances money on those funds shall be reimbursed 
out of the next aid, if the funds fall short ; and then give subsequent 
funds, without transferring the deficiency of the former, is a horrible 
cheat on the subject who lent the money, a breach of public faith, 
and destructive to the honour and credit of Parliaments. 

"2. To imprison men who are not your own members, by no 
proceedings but a vote of the House, and to continue them in custody 
sine die, is illegal ; a notorious breach of the liberty of the people ; 
setting up a dispensing power in the House of Commons, which 
your fathers never pretended to ; bidding defiance to the Habeas 
Corpus Act, which is the bulwark of personal liberty ; destructive of 
the laws, and betraying the trust reposed in you ; the King, at the 
same time, being obliged to ask your leave to continue in custody 
the horrid assassinators of his person. 

"3. Committing to custody those gentlemen, who, at the com- 
mand of the people (whose servants you are), did, in a peaceable 
way, put you in mind of your duty, is illegal and injurious; destruc- 
tive of the subject's right of petitioning for redress of grievances 
which has, by all Parliaments before you, been acknowledged to be 
their undoubted right. 

" 4. Your voting a petition from the gentlemen of Kent insolent, 
is ridiculous and impertinent, because the freeholders of England are 
your superiors ; and is a contradiction in itself, and a contempt of the 
English freedom, and contrary to the nature of parliamentary power. 

"5. Voting people guilty of bribery and ill practices, and com- 
mitting them, as aforesaid, without bail, and then, upon submission 
and kneeling to your House, discharging them, exacting exorbitant 
fees by your officers, is illegal ; betraying the justice of the nation, 
selling the liberty of the subject, encouraging tne extortion and 
villany of gaolers and officers, and discontinuing the legal prosecu- 
tion of offenders in the ordinary course of law. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. * 115 

" 6. Prosecuting the crime of bribery in some, to serve a 
party, and then proceed no further, though proof lay before 
you, is partial and unjust, and a scandal upon the honour of 
Parliaments. 

" 7. Voting the Treaty of Partition fatal to Europe, because it 
gave so much of the Spanish dominions to the French, and not con- 
cerning yourselves to prevent their taking possession of it all; 
deserting the Dutch when the French are at their doors, till it be 
almost too late to help them; is unjust to our treaties, and unkind 
to our confederates, dishonourable to the English nation, and shews 
you very negligent of the safety of England, and of our Protestant 
neighbours. 

" 8. Ordering immediate hearings to trifling petitions, to please 
parties in elections ; and postponing the petition of a widow for the 
blood of her murdered daughter without giving it a reading ; is an 
illegal delay of justice, and dishonourable to the public justice of 
the nation. 

" 9. Addressing the King to displace his friends upon bare sur- 
mises, before a legal trial, or article proved, is illegal, and inverting 
the laws, and making execution go before judgment ; contrary to 
the true sense of the law, which esteems every man a good man till 
something appears to the contrary. 

" 10. Delaying the proceedings upon capital impeachments, to 
blast the reputation of the persons, without proving the fact, is illegal 
and oppressive, destructive of the liberty of Englishmen, a delay of 
justice, and a reproach of Parliaments. 

*' 11. Suffering saucy and indecent reproaches upon his Majesty's 
person to be publicly made in your House, particularly by that im- 
pudent scandal of Parliaments, John Howe, without shewing such 
resentments as you ought to do ; the said John Howe saying openly, 
e that his Majesty had made a felonious treaty to rob his neighbours;' 
insinuating that the Partition Treaty (which was every way as just 
as blowing up one man's house to save another's) was a combination 
to rob the King of Spain of his due. This is making a Billings- 
gate of the House, and setting up to bully your sovereign, contrary 
to the intent and meaning of that freedom of speech, which you 

8* 



116 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

claim as a right, is scandalous to Parliaments, undutiful and 
unmanly, and a reproach to the whole nation. 

"12. Your Speaker exacting the exorbitant rate of £10 per diem 
for the votes, and giving the printer encouragement to raise it on 
the people by selling them at fourpence per sheet, is illegal and 
arbitrary exaction, dishonourable to the House, and burthensome 
to the people. 

"13. JNeglecting still to pay the nation's debts, compounding for 
interest, and postponing petitions, is illegal, dishonourable, and 
destructive of the public faith. 

"14. Publicly neglecting the great work of reformation of manners, 
though often pressed to it by the King, to the great dishonour of God 
and encouragement of vice, is a neglect of your duty, and an abuse 
of the trust reposed in you by God, his Majesty, and the people. 

"15. Being scandalously wicked yourselves, both in your morals 
and religion; lewd in life and erroneous in doctrine; having public 
blasphemers and impudent deniers of the divinity of our Saviour 
amongst you, and suffering them, unreproved and unpunished, to 
the infinite regret of all good Christians, and the just abhorrence of 
the whole nation. 

" Wherefore, in the said prospect of the impending ruin of our 
native country, while Parliaments (which ought to be the security 
and defence of our laws and constitution) betray their trust and 
abuse the people whom they should protect ; and no other way 
being left us but that force which we are very loath to make use of ; 
that posterity may know we did not insensibly fall under the tyranny 
of a prevailing party, we do hereby claim and declare : — 

"1. That it is the undoubted right of the people of England, in case 
their representatives in Parliament do not proceed according to their 
duty and the people's interest, to inform them of their dislike, disown 
their actions, and direct them to such things as they think fit, either 
by petition, address, proposal, memorial, or any other peaceable way. 

" 2. That the House of Commons, separately, and otherwise than 
by bill legally passed into an act, have no legal power to suspend or 
dispense with the laws of the land, any more than the King has by 
his prerogative. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 117 

"3. That the House of Commons has no legal power to im- 
prison any person, or commit them to the custody of Serjeants or 
otherwise (their own members excepted), but ought to address 
the King, to cause any person on good grounds to be apprehended ; 
which person, so apprehended, ought to have the benefit of the 
Habeas Corpus Act, and be fairly brought to trial by due course 
of law. 

" That if the House of Commons, in breach of the laws and liber- 
ties of the people, do betray the trust reposed in them, and act 
negligently, or arbitrarily and illegally, it is the undoubted right of 
the people of England to call them to an account for the same, and 
by convention, assembly, or force, may proceed against them as 
traitors and betrayers of their country. 

" These things we think proper to declare as the unquestioned 
right of the people of England, whom you serve, and in pursuance 
of that right (avoiding the ceremony of petitioning our inferiors, for 
such you are by your present circumstances, as the person sent is 
less than the sender), we do publicly protest against all your afore- 
said illegal actions, and in the name of ourselves, and of all the 
good people of England, do require and demand : — 

" 1. That all the public just debts of the nation be forthwith paid 
and discharged. 

" 2. That all persons illegally imprisoned, as aforesaid, be either 
immediately discharged, or admitted to bail, as by law they ought 
to be, and the liberty of the subject recognized and restored. 

" 3. That John Howe aforesaid be obliged to ask his Majesty's 
pardon for his vile reflections, or be immediately expelled the 
House. 

<c 4. That the growing power of France be taken into considera- 
tion, the succession of the Emperor to the crown of Spain supported, 
our Protestant neighbours protected, as the interest of England and 
the Protestant religion requires. 

" 5. That the French King be obliged to quit Flanders, or his 
Majesty be addressed to declare war against him. 

u 6. That suitable supplies be granted to his Majesty for the 
putting all these necessary things in execution, and that care be 



118 LIFE OP DE FOE. 

taken that such taxes as are raised may be more equally assessed 
and collected, and scandalous deficiencies prevented. 

" 7. That the thanks of this House be given to those gentlemen 
who so gallantly appeared in the behalf of their country with the 
Kentish petition, and have been so scandalously used for it. 

" Thus, gentlemen, you have your duty laid before you, which 'tis 
hoped you will think of; but, if you continue to neglect it, you may 
expect to be treated according to the resentment of an injured nation ; 
for Englishmen are no more to be slaves to Parliament than to kings. 

" Our name is Legion, for we are many. 

" Postscript. — If you require to have this memorial signed with 
our names, it shall be done on your first order, and personally 
presented." 

On referring to Hume's History of England for more particulars 
on this memorial, I find nothing but the following scanty notice of 
so important a document — this Legion Memorial : — "The Commons 
were equally provoked and intimidated by this libel, which was the 
production of one Daniel De Foe, a scurrilous party writer in very 
little estimation." This is history of England ! copied no doubt 
from Oldmixon, the historian of England, and detractor of Daniel 
De Foe, the patriot. When Hume wrote history second-hand from 
Oldmixon's volumes, he little thought that his own History of 
England, then collecting from such authorities, would stink in the 
nostrils of all God-seeking and God-loving people, because it was 
the work of a dangerous man, an infidel ! Why ! a section headed 
Pluralities in the Church of England dispassionately considered, 
would hand down a writer as a son of Belial for fifteen British gene- 
rations. Oh! Do you read him? he is an infidel ! Yes! an infidel ! 
" Do the duty in one parish, and receive the emoluments of two," 
would blast the memory of a writer, not only through the generations 
of all time, but also of all eternity. Such is history, when that his- 
tory happens to touch upon the supposed vested privileges, rights, 
or customs of an established endowed priesthood. 

These stormy wrangles or debates in the Commons, numerous 
and protracted, afforded nothing but a violent altercation between 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 119 

Sir William Strickland, probably member for Yorkshire at the 
time, and the audacious ruffian before mentioned, Jack Howe, "who 
declared "that "William III. had made a felonious treaty to rob 
his neighbours." 

On the close of the session, June 24, the five Kentish petitioners 
were legally discharged, and on their discharge accepted a public 
invitation to a public entertainment at Mercers' Hall, Cheapside; 
where upwards of two hundred guests of the first respectability, as 
ex-lord mayors, sheriffs, &c, connected with the corporation of the 
city of London, as well as individuals connected with the highest 
and most patriotic families in the land, sat down to a noble enter- 
tainment or dinner. Of course the Tories had their scouts looking 
out for disasters at this revolutionary banquet, and Oldmixon and 
other paid scribes were ready to report such disasters in their trashy 
journals of the following week. 

All went off well, and nothing worthy of record occurred during 
the evening to wound the sensitive nerves of rascaldom; for such 
was, emphatically, the quality of the opposition party in the country 
at that time ; excepting the fact that Daniel De Foe was placed at 
table next the petitioners, the especial guests of the evening, as an 
invited guest of the citizens of London. He alone, the author of the 
Legion Letter, was thought worthy of public notice by these lam- 
pooners ; one of whom described him as acting as their secretary of 
state for the evening, and as appearing so delighted with the revo- 
lutionary movement, " that one might have read the downfall of 
Parliaments in his very countenance." 

A scurrilous, unscrupulous, and unprincipled writer is a great 
assistance on such a point as this ; for by his raking among the rub- 
bish of events, to fish for scandal and food for detraction, De Foe 
is thrown upon the surface just where his best friends and greatest 
admirers would wish to find him on this very memorable occasion. 
De Foe's share in the Monmouth invasion is rejected by me as im- 
probable, for want of this Oldmixon sort of evidence, to support the 
fact at the time with venom and malignity. If L'Estrange, Ned 
Ward, Tom Browne, or Oldmixon, had at the time affirmed that Foe, 
the hosier, was a captain or general in Monmouth's force, I should 



120 LIFE OP DE FOE. 

have rejoiced to record the fact. Here, Daniel De Foe was cer- 
tainly mixed up with the Kentish petitioners, and was acknow- 
ledged as one of the party on the 24th day of June, 1701, when he 
was invited by the citizens of London, along with them, to a public 
dinner at Mercers' Hall, in Cheapside; and thanks to Oldmixon or 
Lesley for the information. Lampooning was the order of the 
day ; and Daniel De Foe was the chief object of attack, along with 
the Kentish petitioners, William III., Lord Somers, the Earl of 
Halifax, the Earl of Orford, and the Earl of Portland, four of the 
late ministry ; with all and every man or thing honest and illustrious 
in the United Kingdom. 

But to return to the dinner party at Mercer &' Hall, which had 
been such an important affair as to bring together as many lookers- 
on and street-followers as a lord mayor's show ; for the petitioners 
had been escorted in triumph from the gaol of Newgate, through 
the streets of London, cheered by the acclamations of exulting thou- 
sands ; and, as the party had to return to their own homes in Kent, 
the citizens offered to accompany them in procession out of the 
town, which would be over London Bridge and through the Borough. 
But this honour was prudently declined, from fear of tumult; there- 
fore the party returned some miles by water; their carriages having 
been sent away empty. But all these precautions availed nothing, 
for the populace would turn out wherever there was a chance of 
obtaining a sight of the petitioners ; the first opportunity for which 
occurring at Blackheath, where Mr. Polhill, one of the five, having 
to take a different route to the rest to reach his house at Ottford, 
was met by five hundred horsemen, who surrounded his coach with 
shouts of joy, as a testimony of their satisfaction at his return 
amongst them, and escorted him home in triumph. The other 
gentlemen proceeded to Rochester, where they were met by the 
mayor and half the county. From Rochester they proceeded to 
Maidstone, where the population came out to welcome them; some 
in coaches, some on horseback, and many on foot. In this grand 
county procession, flowers were strewed in the way, the church bells 
were rung, and such rejoicings were manifested as had not been 
seen or known in Kent since the restoration of Charles II. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 121 

Publications swarmed on all hands ; and amongst the first 
appeared the History of the Kentish Petition, which Oldmixon 
proclaimed to the world as coming from the ready pen of Daniel 
De Foe. 1 

This was truly a period of great national political excitement, 
partly from the death of James II., when his son was acknowledged 
King of England by the French court, and, consequently, the 
Spanish court — for these two were as one in respect to all European 
political matters — and partly on account of De Foe's Legion Memo- 
rial ; which brought into existence a host of pamphlets and ballads 
of all qualities, though many of these Tory productions were, ac- 
cording to Bishop Burnet, very poorly written. 3 

The next effort of De Foe's pen was on the war with France, a 
work entitled Reasons against a War with France ; or, an Argu- 
ment shewing that the French King's Owning the Prince of Wales 
as King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, is no sufficient Ground 
of War. This tract was justly considered at the time to be one of 
the finest productions of the pen that ever appeared in the English 
language — fine, because true to the letter ; and useful as a guide to 

1 Then appeared Jura Populi Anglicani ; or, the Subject's Right of Petitioning set 
forth, tvith some Thoughts on the Seasons which induced those Gentlemen to Petition, 

and of the Commons' Right of Imprisoning ; and from the legal knowledge displayed, 
and the amount of high education brought to bear on the subject, it was generally 
allowed to be the production of one of the most accomplished gentlemen and scholars 
in England — Lord Somers, one of the impeached ministers. After going into the power 
of the House of Commons, the right of subjects to petition, and the reasons influencing 
the county of Kent to petition, he takes a survey of Whig and Tory, and compares 
these with the ruling party in the House of Commons, such as was never seen before ; 
for "in this party are all those whom either the love of money, or of the St. G-ermain 
family (the Pretender's), or Popery, has reconciled to the French interest;" and he 
believes, as was the general belief in the kingdom at the time, that Louis XI V. had 
used French money to turn the English elections ; for this Parliament was neither Whig 
nor Tory, but French. A French Parliament sitting in Westminster, obtained by 
bribery and corruption among the electors ! 

2 This Legion Memorial was attacked in its turn by an author in England's Enemies 
Exposed, and its true Friends and Patriots Defended, by a True Englishman ; and 
this author was again attacked in the Preface of the Present Disposition of England 
Considered. 

The author of Jura Populi Anglicani (Lord Somers) defends Legion Memorial, and 
pays a very high compliment to him — a trifiing set-off to Pope, Swift, Drake, Old- 
mixon, L'Estrange, Hume, John How the minister, Ned Ward, Thomas Browne, and 
others. 



122 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

the British public in this time of want of public principle. Many 
of his writings at this time never came before the public eye ; but 
were written expressly for William III., as state papers on carrying 
on any Spanish war, rather in the West Indies, or even on the con- 
tinent of America, than in Europe. De Foe had certain fixed notions 
on seizing the Spanish -bullion fleets before they had left the West- 
Indian waters ; for he always maintained that American silver and 
other produce were the real means of carrying on the war, both by 
France and Spain. 

The next production from the ready pen of De Foe came out at 
this time, as a support of the Kentish Petition and Legion Memorial, 
a very useful tract of thirty pages, with two prefaces— one to the 
King and the other to the Lords and Commons. I cannot pretend 
to do justice to this very valuable production in a few scattered 
extracts, which I may have taken at random ; but if those extracts 
should be spun out to an undue length, may I ask pardon for the 
transgression, on the ground that the pamphlet is one of the most 
valuable now extant in the English language, on the subject of the 
Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England ? 
We live in such an age of whining cant and Jerry- Sneak, that if I 
should transgress the bounds of an ordinary quotation, provided 
I make the best selections in my power of a work truly good, may 
I be pardoned? 

I will now quote from the Preface to the King : — 

" Your Majesty knows too well the nature of government, to 
think it at all less honourable, or the more precarious, for being 
devolved from, and centred in, the consent of your people. 

(f The pretence of patriarchal authority, had it really an uninter- 
rupted succession, can never be supported against the demonstrated 
practice of all nations ; but being also divested of the chief support 
it might have had, if that succession could have been proved, the 
authority of governors jure divino has sunk ignominiously to the 
ground as a preposterous and inconsistent forgery. 

" And yet, if vox populi be, as 'tis generally allowed, vox Dei, your 
Majesty's right to these kingdoms jure divino is more plain than 
any of your predecessors. 



LIFE OP DE FOE. 123 

" How vain are the attempts of a neighbouring Prince to nurse 
up a contemptible impostor, upon the pretence of forming a claim on 
the foundation of but a pretended succession, against the consent of 
the general suffrage of the nation ! 

" To what purpose shall all the proofs of his legitimacy be, sup- 
posing it could be made out, when the universal voice of the people, 
already expressed in enacted laws, shall answer, ' We will not have 
this man to reign over us ' ? " 

From the Preface to the Lords and Commons, I will take some 
extracts, as follows : — 

" You [the Lords] sit in Parliament as a branch of our constitu- 
tion being part of the collective body, representing no body but your- 
selves; and as a testimony that the original of all power centres 
in the whole. 

" The rest of the freeholders have originally a right to sit there 
with you ; but being too numerous a body, they have long since 
agreed, that whenever the King thinks fit to advise with his people, 
they will choose a certain few out of their great body to meet 
together with your Lordships. 

" Here, in short, is the original of Parliaments ; and here, if 
power at any time meets with a cess — if government and thrones 
become vacant — to this original all power of course returns. This 
is the happy centre in the great circle of politic order. 

"From hence, at the late Revolution, when the King deserted 
his administration, and his present Majesty was in arms in Eng- 
land, nature directed the people to have recourse to your Lordships, 
and to desire your appearance as the heads of the great collective 
body; and all the champions for the great arguments of divine 
right could not in that exigence have recourse to one precedent, 
nor to one rule of proceeding, but what nature would have dictated 
to the meanest judgment, viz., that the nation being left without a 
governor, the proprietors should meet to consider of another. 

" And you, gentlemen of the House of Commons, who are the 
representatives of your country, you are this great collective body 
in miniature ; you are an abridgment of the many volumes of the 
English nation. 



124 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

" To you they have trusted, jointly with the King and the Lords, 
the power of making laws, raising taxes, and impeaching criminals. 
But how? 'Tis in the name of all the Commons of England, whose 
representatives you are. 

" All your power is yours, as you are a full and free representa- 
tive. I nowhere attempt to prove what powers you have not ; 
possibly the extent of your legal authority was never fully under- 
stood, nor have you ever thought fit to explain it. But this I may 
be bold to advance, that whatever powers you have, or may have, 
you cannot exercise but in the name of the Commons of England, 
and you enjoy them as their representative, and for their use. 

11 All this is not said to lessen your authority ; nor can it be the 
interest of any English Freeholder to lessen the authority of the 
Commons assembled in Parliament. 

" You are the conservators of our liberties, the expositors of our 
laws, the levyers of our taxes, and the redressors of our grievances, 
the King's best councillors, and the people's last refuge. 

" But if you are dissolved, for you are not immortal ; or if you 
are deceived, for you are not infallible ; 'twas never yet supposed, 
till very lately, that all power dies with you. 

" You may die, but the people remain ; you may be dissolved, and 
all immediate right may cease ; power may have its intervals, and 
crowns their interregnums; but original power endures to the 
same eternity the world endures to. And while there is people, 
there may be a legal authority delegated, though all succession of 
substituted power were at an end. 

"Nor have I advanced any new doctrine, nothing but what is 
as ancient as nature, and born into the world with our reason ; and 
I think it would be a sin against the Parliament of England to 
suggest, that they would be offended either with the doctrine or the 
author, since 'tis what their own authority is built upon, and what 
the laws of England have given their assent unto, by confirming 
the acts of the last collective body of the people, from whence the 
present settlement of the nation does derive. 

" Wherefore I make no apology for protection or favour as to the 
fact ; as to language, I am ready to ask pardon if I offend, declaring 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 125 

my intention is neither for nor against either person or party. As 
there is but one interest in the nation, T wish there were but one 
party, and that party would adhere to unbiassed justice, and pursue 
the honour and interest of the Protestant Religion and the 
English Liberty." 

Having done with the Preface, we will now turn our attention to 
the work itself, and give as short extracts as bare justice to this 
valuable work will allow. 

" The defence of the rights of the representative body of the people, 
understood by the name of the Commons of England in Parlia- 
ment, is a great point ; and so plain are their rights that His no extra- 
ordinary task to defend them. But for any man to advance that 
they are so august an assembly that no objection ought to be made 
to their actions, nor no reflection upon their conduct, though the 
fact be true ; and that it is not to be examined whether the thing 
said be true, but what authority the person speaking has to say it, 
is a doctrine wholly new, and seems to me to be a badge of more 
slavery to our own representatives than ever the people of England 
owes them, or than ever they themselves expected. 

"This, therefore, together with some invasions of the people's 
rights made public by several modern authors, are the reasons why 
I have adventured, being wholly disinterested and unconcerned 
either for persons or parties, to make a short essay at declaring the 
rights of the people of England, not representatively but collectively 
considered. And with due deference to the representative body of 
the nation, I hope I may say, it can be no diminution of their rights 
to assert the rights of that body from whom they derive the powers 
and privileges of their House, and which are the very foundation of 
their being. For if the original right of the people be overthrown, 
the power of the representative, which is subsequent and sub- 
ordinate, must die of itself. To come directly to what I design in 
the following papers, His necessary to lay down some maxims other 
than what a late author has furnished us with. 

"1. Baluspopuli suprema lex. — All government, and consequently 
our whole constitution, was originally designed, and is maintained, 
for the support of the people's property, who are the governed, 



126 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

" 2. That all the members of government — whether King, Lords, 
or Commons — if they invert the great end of their institution, the 
public good, cease to be in the same public capacity — 
And power retreats to its original. 

"3, That no collective or representative body of men whatsoever, 
in matters of politicks any more than religion, are, or ever have 
been, infallible. 

" 4. That reason is the test and touchstone of laws ; and that all 
law or power that is contradictory to reason is, ipso facto, void in 
itself, and ought not to be obeyed/ ' 

These four generals run through the whole discourse. Some other 
maxims less general are the consequence of these, as : — 

"First, That such laws as are agreeable to reason and justice, 
being once made, are binding, both to King, Lords, and Commons, 
either separately or conjunctively, till they are actually repealed in 
due form. 

" That if either of the three powers do dispense with, suspend, or 
otherwise break any of the known laws so made, they injure the 
constitution ; and the person so acting, ought to be restrained by 
the other powers not concurring, according to what is lately allowed 
— that every branch of power is designed as a check upon each other. 

" The good of the people governed is the end of all government, 
and the reason and original of governors ; and upon this foundation 
it is that it has been the practice of all nations, and of this in par- 
ticular, that if the maladministration of governors have extended 
to tyranny and oppression, to the destruction and abusing the people, 
the people have thought it lawful to reassume the right of govern- 
ment in their own hands, and to reduce their governors to reason. 

" The present happy restoring of our liberty and constitution is 
owing to this fundamental maxim, — 

That Kings, when they descend to tyranny, 
Dissolve the bond, and leave the subject free. 

■' If the people are justifiable in this procedure against the King, I 
hope I shall not be censured if I say, that if any one should ask_me 
whether they have not the same right, in the same cases, against 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 127 

any of the three heads of the constitution, I dare not answer in the 
negative. 

' ' I may be. allowed to suppose anything which is possible ; and I 
will, therefore, venture to suppose, that in the late King's reign, 
the House of Commons, then sitting, had voted the restoration of 
Popery in England, in compliance with the King's inclination, I 
doubt not but it had been lawful for the grand juries, justices of the 
peace, and freeholders of any county, or of every county, to have 
petitioned the House of Commons not to proceed in giving up their 
religion and laws. And in case of refusal there, they might petition 
the House of Lords not to have passed such a bill ; and in case of 
refusal there, they might petition the King, and put him in mind 
of his coronation engagement ; and in case of refusal to that peti- 
tion, they might petition the King to dissolve the Parliament, or 
otherwise to protect their liberties and religion. 

" And if all these peaceable applications failed, I doubt not but 
they might associate for their mutual defence against any invasion 
of their liberties and religion, and apply themselves to any neigh- 
bouring power or potentate for assistance and protection. 

" If this be not true, I can give but a slender account of our late 
Revolution, which, nevertheless, I think to be founded upon the 
exact principles of reason and justice. What are the different terms 
which statesmen turn so often into fine words to serve their ends ; 
as — reason of state, public good, the commonwealth, the English 
constitution, the government, the laws of England, the liberties of 
England, the fleets, the armies, the militia of England, the trade, 
the manufactures of England? All are but several terms drawn 
from, and reducible to, the great term — the People of England. 
That's the general, which contains all the particulars, and which 
had all power, before any of the particulars had a being ; and from 
this consideration it is, that some who yet would be opposers of this 
doctrine, say, when it serves their turn, that all the great offices 
which have the title of England annexed to them, ought to be 
nominated and approved by the people of England, as the High 
Chancellor of England, High Admiral of England, and the like. 

" The power vested in the three heads of our constitution is 



128 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

vested in them by the people of England j who were a people before 
there was such a thing as a constitution. 

' ' And the nature of the thing is the reason of the thing ; it 
was vested in them by the people, because the people were the 
only original of their power, being the only power prior to the 
constitution. 

" For the public good of the people, a constitution and govern- 
ment was originally formed; from the mutual consent of these 
people, the powers and authorities of this constitution are derived ; 
and for the preservation of this constitution, and enabling it to 
answer the ends of its institution, in the best manner possible, those 
powers were divided. 

" The second maxim is a rational natural consequence of the 
former : that at the final, casual, or any other determination of this 
constitution, the powers are dissolved ; and all authority must derive 
de novo from the first fountain, original, and cause of all consti- 
tutions — the governed. 

" Now, it cannot be supposed this original fountain should give 
up all its waters, but that it reserves a power of supplying the 
streams ; nor have the streams any power to turn back upon the 
fountain, and invert its own original. All such motions are eccen- 
trick and unnatural. 

" There must always remain a supreme power in the original to 
supply, in case of the dissolution of delegated power. 

" The people of England have delegated all the executive power 
in the King; the legislative in the King, Lords, and Commons; 
the sovereign judicature in the Lords ; the remainder is reserved in 
themselves, and not committed; no, not to their representatives. 
All powers delegated are to one great end and purpose, and no other; 
and that is the public good. If either, or all the branches to whom 
this power is delegated, invert the design, the end of their power, 
the right they have to that power ceases ; and they become tyrants 
and usurpers of a power they have no right to. 

"The instance has been visible as to kings in our days; and 
history is full of precedents in all ages and in all nations ; parti- 
cularly in Spain, in Portugal, in Sweden, in France, and in Poland. 



LIFE OF DE FOE, 129 

" But in England the late revolution is a particular instance of 
the exercise of this power. 

" King James, on the approach of a foreign army., and the general 
recourse of the people to arms, fled out of the kingdom. What 
must the people of England do ? 

" They had no reason to run after him ; there was nobody to call 
a parliament ; so the constitution was entirely dissolved. 

" The original of power, the people, assembled in convention, to 
consider of delegating new powers for their future government, and 
accordingly made a new settlement of the crown, a new declaration 
of right, and a new representative of the people; and what if I 
should say they ought to have given a new sanction to all pre- 
cedent laws ? 

" Nor can I be sensible of offending, if I say that 'tis possible for 
even a House of Commons to be in the wrong. 'Tis possible for a 
House of Commons to be misled by factions and parties ; 'tis pos- 
sible for them to be bribed by pensions and places ; and by either 
of these extremes to betray their trust, and abuse the people who 
entrust them ; and, if people should have no redress in such a case, 
then would the nation be in the hazard of being ruined by their 
own representatives. And 'tis a wonder to find it asserted, in a 
certain treatise, that it is not to be supposed that even the House 
of Commons can injure the people who entrust them. There can 
be no better way to demonstrate the possibility of a thing, than by 
proving that it has been already. 

"And we need go no further back than to the reign of King 
Charles II., in which we have seen lists of 180 members who re- 
ceived private pensions from the court ; and if anybody shall ask 
whether that Parliament preserved the balance of power in the 
three branches of our constitution, in the due distribution some 
have mentioned, I am not afraid to answer in the negative, 

" And why, even to this day, are gentlemen so fond of spending 
their estates to sit in that House, that ten thousand pounds have 
been spent at a time, to be chosen ; and, now that way of procuring 
elections is at an end, private briberies and clandestine contrivances 
are made use of to get into the House ? No man would give a groat 

9 



130 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

to sit where he cannot get a groat honestly for sitting, unless there 
were either parties to gratify, profits to be made, or interest to 
support. 

" If it be but possible, it is not reasonable, the liberty and safety 
of England should be exposed even to a possibility of disaster ; and 
therefore reason and justice allow, that when all delegated powers 
fail or expire; when governors devour the people they should protect ; 
and when Parliaments — if ever that unhappy time shall come again 
— should be either destroyed, or, which is as bad, be corrupted, and 
betray the people they represent; the people themselves, who are 
the original of all delegated power, have an undoubted right to de- 
fend their lives, liberties, properties, religion, and laws, against all 
manner of invasion or treachery, be it foreign or domestick ; the 
constitution is dissolved, and the laws of Nature and reason, act of 
course, according to the following system of government : — 

" The government 's ungirt when Justice dies, 
And constitutions are nonentities ; 
The nation 's all a mob ; there 's no such thing 
As Lords and Commons, Parliament, or King. 
A great promiscuous crowd the hydra lies, 
Till laws revive, and mutual contract ties. 
A chaos free to choose for their own share, 
What case of government they please to wear. 
If to a King they do the rein3 commit, 
All men are bound in conscience to submit. 
But then the King must by his oath assent 
To postulatas of the government : 
Which, if he break, he cuts off the entail, 
And power retreats to its original." 

Poor James II., after living a life of exile and contempt for twelve 
years, died at St. Germains, near Paris, Sept. 16, 1701, in the 68th 
year of his age : a man possessing all the cold phlegmatic dispo- 
sition of his father, with the priest-ridden malignity of the mother. 
James II., a bigoted monk, dead, and his son James acknowledged 
as King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by Louis XIV. of 
France, which induced William III. to declare war against France — 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 131 

a project in which he was heartily supported by his people ; aroused 
to a sense of the indignity offered to him by a foreign power, 
anxious at all hazards to keep up the old predominant influence at 
the Court of St. James's, by any tool, however mean, poor, or con- 
temptible. De Foe, anxious to strengthen the English interest on 
this opening prospect of better times (when James, the acknow- 
ledged King of the Jacobites of England, was dead, and they, freed 
by that death from the obligation imposed upon their consciences by 
their oaths of allegiance ; a great hindrance to their acknowledging 
William as their king, and an inducement to throw all their weight 
into the French scale ; the French King being altogether the pro- 
tector and supporter of the exiled family, so nearly connected with 
himself by relationship and similarity of interest, religious as well 
as political, the one being Soman Catholic, and the other anti- 
Dutch, or anti-liberal), wrote his pamphlet, entitled The Present 
State of Jacobitism Considered, in two Queries — 1. What Measures 
the French King will take with respect to the Person and Title of 
the P. P. of Wales ? 2. What the Jacobites in England ought to do 
on the same account ? Lond. 1701. 

We have seen before that the House of Commons was bought up 
with French gold, and altogether devoted to French interests ; this 
was not the class which De Foe was attempting to persuade into 
English principles, because they were beyond the powers of per- 
suasion by pamphlet reading. Such degraded tools as these read 
no pamphlets ; they read nothing but orders for French pensions or 
French rewards : they were paid tools and servants of France, hired 
into the English House of Commons to do French work there; 
and it was in opposition to this French party that De Foe wrote the 
above-named pamphlet, to the old gentry or squirarchy of England; 
who were honestly the only true supporters of the house of Stuart, 
through all their troubles and misfortunes. This party was numerous 
in England, and as respectable as numerous ; scattered through the 
land in the old baronial retreats of the olden gentry ; a class who 
stuck to their old religion, with their old halls, their old tenantry, 
their old servants, hounds, and horses ; with the old patronage 
of the village feast, with the May-pole anniversaries, Christmas 

9* 



132 LIFE OF DF FOE. 

revelry, and the like : a class venerable on their own est >tes, and 
influential there, and in their several counties, at quarter session, 
assize, race, or cock-fighting gatherings; according to their several 
dispositions for urbanity or otherwise, and the extent of their estates; 
where they for the most part resided, and kept up the festivities of 
fine old English gentlemen. 

This was the Jacobite party inEngland in the reign of William III., 
and to this party De Foe now addressed himself; for, their old 
sovereign James II. being dead, they were freed from their oaths of 
allegiance to him. To these men De Foe addressed himself; for 
them he wrote his pamphlet, but wrote to little purpose ; for they 
were so fortified with old family associations in county and borough, 
and religious associations too, three generations deep ; so full of 
old prejudice and old respectability, and old fusty pride; that he 
might as well have addressed the nether millstone of scripture (the 
lower thicker stone on which the quern or handmill of India, Pales- 
tine, and Carthage, was turned) as have addressed them. As for 
pamphlets, they read few of them ; and as for Foe the author, if 
Daniel's name ever appeared on the surface of their book-shelves — 
who was he ? He was not Tusser on Husbandry, nor yet Gervase 
Markham, nor Froissart — who was he ? Was he one of the quorum, 
whose evidence was worth accepting ? 

Upon this party De Foe made very little impression with book- 
writing, for they for the most part did not care to be book-readers ; 
with the most of them the very idea of sitting by the fireside to 
read a book, would be about the far-end of human existence. De 
Foe might write ! This party reasoned, and very fairly too, that as 
James II., the relative of Louis XIV., had always been considered 
King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by Louis, it was but natural 
that on the father's death the son should succeed to the inheritance ; 
and if that inheritance were no more than an empty title, yet it 
was his, as belonging to his father. This was the natural course of 
argument of men who built all their creed upon the divine right of 
kings — a principle which had been sucked in by the whole party 
with their very mother's milk ; it was the very vitality of all their 
religion, politics, and social feelings— Church and King. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 133 

De Foe's pamphlet was answered by a non-juror divine, but to a 
poor purpose ; and other writers came to the attack or defence in 
large numbers, and of all grades of opinion. The poor Whigs, 
out of place, and under the ban of Louis's stockjobbing Parliament, 
took their share in the contest, and intimated, where they could, 
that a new Parliament might be advantageous to English interests. 
Amongst the latter was the patriotic, honest, and accomplished 
Lord Somers, who wrote Anguis in Herba, or the Fatal Consequences 
of a Treaty with France; wherein it is proved " that the principles 
whereby the French King governs himself, will not allow him to 
observe any treaty longer than it is for his interest to break it ; 
that he has always aimed at the union of the crowns of France and 
Spain since the Pyrennean Treaty ; that, notwithstanding his pre- 
tences to the contrary, such is his design at this day; and that 
nothing can prevent it, but to reduce his power to such a degree as 
may perfectly break his measures." Lond. 1701*. This important 
and well- written pamphlet made such an impression on the^ nation 
as to turn the feeling for peace, imposed upon the ruling powers of 
this nation, by the French party in power, and commanding the 
national purse; and a general and national cry of indignation was 
raised against the French King, and a demand for war with France 
universally proclaimed throughout the nation ; by the Whig party 
especially, now rousing itself from its prostrated position. All Avas 
tumult and exultation in the political world, and De Foe must be 
among the strife o£ course, and come out with another pamphlet, 
entitled Reasons against a War with France; or, an Argument, 
shewing that the French King's owning the Prince of Wales as King 
of England, Scotland, and Ireland, is no sufficient Ground of a War. 
Lond. 1701. De Foe was not averse to a war with France, provided 
that the war could be justified to the English nation, on just as well 
as public grounds; but he had a decided objection to this nation 
being plunged into a war with France for no better object than to 
thwart or annoy the Tory party, and reinstate the Whigs in power. 
He very properly objected to this country being plunged into a war 
with France, because the French King chose to bestow an empty 
title on the Pretender, out of some pretended respect for his father 



134 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

and family. De Foe admitted the insult to William to be great ; 
but yet, insult as it was, there could be no reason why Great Britain 
should be plunged into a war with France on account of it. It was, 
moreover, his opinion, that " whoever desires that we should end 
the war honourably, ought to desire also that we begin it fairly. 
Natural antipathies are no just ground of a war between nations ; 
neither popular opinions j nor is every invasion of a right a good 
reason for a war ; at least until redress has first been demanded in a 
peaceable way." De Foe appeared to think that a war in Europe 
against Spain, so as to rid the Netherlands of Spanish sovereignty, 
would be far more for the interest of civilisation in Europe. 

This pamphlet only disgusted the Whigs, the great advocates of 
the war, as might be supposed ; for they wanted to wage war on per- 
sonal feelings for party revenge ; but De Foe, who had nothing in 
common with them, wished the nation to undertake nothing but on 
purely national grounds, for the readjusting the balance of power 
in Europe. De Foe was right. What had the nation to do with 
the Smith, Jubb, Snob, or Muggs families, ringing changes on the 
national bells of England for their own individual family aggran- 
disement, and to the total neglect of all God's created universe be- 
sides ? What is the concentrated essence of all true Whiggery ? 
Is it not " Me and my brother, and our two nephews, and a cousin" ? 
Is this Whiggery ? De Foe's pamphlet was not relished by the 
W T higs, for it was national, instead of being party ; but yet that 
pamphlet was one of the most patriotic productions that ever ap- 
peared in the English language ; and Dr. Towers, the writer of his 
life in the Biographica Britannica, says : — " In this piece, De Foe 
w T rote against the views and conduct of the court, and against what 
then seemed to be the prevailing sense of the nation. He appears, 
however, to have been perfectly right ; to have exhibited on this 
occasion great political discernment, and to have been influenced 
by no motives but those of public spirit." Two or more writers 
attacked him again, but without producing any reply from him; he 
having already written the most weighty pamphlet of the day, by 
far, upon the subject. How the Whigs would blame De Foe at this 
time ! How they would call him a Tory, and a pensioner of France ! 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 135 

How they would consider him as most injurious to their party ! I 
know them well ; and I could fancy all the abuse they would heap 
upon his devoted head, because he did not lick the dust at their 
bidding, and write them into office again. 1 No ! De Foe knew 
better. He took his own stand, as an independent, honest man; 
and he did right. Why should he be a tool of their selectabilities ? 
I have been a corn-law repealer, and I have seen in Whiggery the 
very same political materials that De Foe had to deal with. As he 
valued them, so I valued them ; for I found them contemptible. If 
De Foe had acted the mere tool of Whiggery, down the kennel of 
oblivion, along with them, would he have been swilled; and his illus- 
trious name would have been like theirs from the same cause. Many 
of these names never would have come down to our time, had it not 
been for their connection some how or other with, perhaps as perse- 
cutors of, Daniel De Foe. I could give half a dozen leaders of both 
parties, who would have descended long ago into the utter darkness 
of oblivion, had it not been for the reputation of Daniel De Foe. 
Why, the Earl of Nottingham, one of Queen Anne's ministers, 
would have descended at once into the dark shade of nothingness, 
had not De Foe stood three days in the pillory, and remained several 
months in Newgate, at this man's instigation. Pillory immortalized 
his name ! Such is human greatness ! 

Poor William ! When almost harassed to death by vexation, 
occasioned by the political contentions of his Tory ministers and his 
Tory-French House of Commons, his health visibly declining ; when 
he was seen by all to be fast descending to the grave, although he 
was but a man of fifty-one years of age ; he used in his troubles to 
retire to Holland, and there he remained several months of the sum- 
mer of 1701. This he did for relief from annoyance — the annoy- 
ance of French interference with his government of his people of 
England ; for, as I have said before, the House of Commons was 
bought up with French gold. In the autumn of this year, he 

* 

1 What a mass of valuable efficiency there would have been in his pen, if he had 
been their obedient servant, to write exclusively for them ; with three or four under 
spur-leathers placed over him, to inform him what he should not do, and what he should 
do, to write this or that man into place, and serve our side ! 



136 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

returned to this country, and, in despair, dissolved the Parliament 
by proclamation, on Nov. 11, 1701, and attempted to change 
his ministers at the same time, but could not do it ; for Lord 
Somers, the most honest and capable man in the kingdom, would 
not accept office again under William, because he had no confidence 
in the King's firmness of purpose ; for William had fallen prostrate 
before Tory influences once in calling them to power; and he might 
do it again, though he protested again and again that he never 
would. 

On the dissolution of Parliament, the Tory scribes — Dr. Drake, a 
poor physician without patients, and Dr. Davenant, perhaps a 
Chancery lawyer without briefs — took the field as Tory pamphleteers, 
along with others, to prop up, if possible, the present French or 
Pretender interests in the country, and especially among the electors. 
The Whigs also had their writers in support of their party ; so 
that the whole country was inundated with pamphlets, lampoons, 
squibs, satires, truths, and falsehoods; in all forms of prose and verse. 

By chance, the Whigs had detected Dr. Davenant, Mr. A. 
Hammond, and Mr. John Tudenham, three members conspicuous 
for their zeal in the French interest, supping with M. Poussin, the 
French electioneering agent, at the Blue Posts, in the Haymarket, 
immediately after the dissolution of Parliament had been proclaimed. 
These three names were taken, along with 164 more members, who 
always voted for the French or Pretender interest, and were sup- 
posed to be in the pay of the King of France. Their names were 
printed on a placard, and the most obnoxious in black letter ; and 
this placard, called the Black List, was circulated by thousands 
through the country; while M. Poussin, the Frenchman, was ordered 
to leave the country in a few hours. 

The electors were universally called upon to come to the rescue of 
their country and their King ; for the kingdom was in danger from 
the Pretender or the King of France meddling with the elections ; 
and all Englishmen were called upon to turn out all the men named 
on the black list, for they were Poussineers, or French pensioners. 
This proscribing list, or black-list system, was justified by the cir- 
cumstances of the times, and produced a complete panic through 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 137 

the country ; but this French party lost only forty-six of their pro- 
scribed list, among whom were Hammond, Dr. Davenant, Shower, 
and the coarse, vulgar " scandal of Parliaments," Jack Howe. The 
loss would have been much greater, but this French party were all- 
powerful in the patronage of office, having the government altogether 
in their hands. In this state of turmoil and panic appeared Legion, 
whom the French Tory tool, Dr. Davenant, had, in a pamphlet, 
condemned to be hanged at Tyburn ; and so they called out again 
from his retirement De Foe, in a well-written, powerful pamphlet, 
entitled Legion's New Paper ; being a Second Memorial to the 
Gentlemen of a late House of Commons. With Legion's Humble 
Address to his Majesty. 

This latter Legion was addressed to the gentlemen of the Com- 
mons, and formed a second part to that Legion Letter delivered by 
De Foe, dressed as a woman, to the Speaker of the Commons, when 
near the door of the House. This letter was very well timed, and 
produced a great sensation in the country, and especially among 
the electors, as most of De Foe's writings did, for he was more than 
a match for the whole brotherhood of pamphleteers, whether Whig 
or Tory ; for he grappled equally with pamphleteers and slanderers 
of both, considering that both parties were more intent upon serving 
their own interests, their own sides, and their own parties, than the 
true interests of their country, their own England. This second 
Legion Letter commences as follows : — 

" Gentlemen, — The greatest respect which could possibly have 
been shown to you by the people of England had been to have let 
your actions have sunk into forgetfulness ; and, in kindness to you, 
have let neither you nor your deeds have been named any more in 
your native country. But since those people, who (in your House) 
were so restless in their endeavours to ruin us, are not ashamed to 
undertake your defence, we are obliged, in the just vindication of 
our native right, further to expose your errors than in charity to 
your memory we designed. We are bound to let the people know 
that a late pamphlet, printed by your own club, and industriously 
spread over the whole nation, entitled A Defence of the last Parlia- 
ment, is calculated to wheedle the people to choose you again. But 



138 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

we hope their eyes will be opened ; and we wonder you can suggest 
that the freeholders should so contradict the language of their 
addresses, and be found so to mock the King and the nation, as to 
address you out of doors, and then put you in again themselves. 
If they should act so unaccountably, kings, for the future, will 
the better know what English addresses signify." 

Again: "Gentlemen, — The same hand that presented your Speaker 
with a certain Memorial, called the Legion Paper, written, as Mr. 
Harley very well knows, in a hand that stood the wrong way ; that 
paper, which came, as is said, from two hundred thousand English- 
men ; that paper, which frighted Mr. P and Mr. H t, and 

several others, into the country ; that paper, which Mr. Howe, in 
a lamentable tone, told the House made him, from a sense of his 
own guilt, afraid of his life ; that paper, which put you all so beside 
yourselves, as to make a senseless address to his Majesty, to defend 
himself against his people, which address you were afterwards 
ashamed to present ; that paper, which you had so little wit as to 
read, and so much modesty — that is, guilt — as to blush at ; that 
paper, which made you wish you had never committed the Kentish 
petitioners, and made you afraid to prosecute them ; that paper, 
which made you clap up the sessions in such haste as made the 
Lords baffle you, and all the people ashamed of you ; that paper, 
which made you pass one good vote at parting — to desire the King 
to make alliances, &c. — which some of your members called a 
sweetener, that you might not be afraid to go home; the same 
hand presents you with this paper, as the true sense of the nation 
concerning you." 

Again : " You are the men that have endeavoured to possess the 
people with the fears and jealousies of slavery at home; under the 
protection and government of the only King in the world that ever 
Sincerely sought and effectually restored our freedom." 

DeFoe charges these men with betraying the liberties of their coun- 
try, by nattering their kings into the belief of their divine rights — 
rights which were only imaginary ; for neither God,, nature, nor the 
people, had ever given them. He tells this House of Commons — this 
most corrupt of all corrupt Houses of Commons ; for it was a French 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 139 

House of Commons, purchased of the electors of England with 
French gold, through the agency of the French ambassador in 
London, and through the instrumentability for working up the 
scheme of such paid writers or pamphleteers as Dr. Davenant and 
Dr. Drake, with a body-guard of such legislators as Jack Howe to 
bring up the rear-guard ; — De Foe, in this pamphlet, comes out with 
energy and truth equal to the demands of the occasion ; he goes 
home to the hearts of the electors, entreating them to send such 
honest gentlemen as will stand up for religion ; and hold the balance 
of the state with that equality between every branch of the consti- 
tution that neither may oppress the other, and that the whole may 
be in its full and free exercise ; in order to bring more easily and 
effectually to pass that which is the great original of all constitutions 
in the world — the good of the people. No man could come out more 
patriotically and worthy of himself than De Foe did at 'this time ; in 
urging the people to do justice to themselves, and set a brand or 
mark of infamy upon this corrupt House of Commons ; or, in their 
infatuation and blindness in failing to do this, might they deserve 
to be betrayed to the end of the chapter, and England be left to fall 
unpitied by all the nations of the world. This was coming to the 
rescue of British liberty at a time when Britain required assistance 
more than at any period, either before or since. 

Dr. Davenant, in one of his anonymous productions, bears me 
out in what I have said on De Foe's services at this time ; some 
allowance, of course, being made for the hostile position of the 
writer : — " Legion is come out again, more impudent and inflaming 
than he was last year ; and the authority of the House of Commons 
is there attacked in a most audacious manner, which looks as if 
you (De Foe) designed to throw off your mask, and fall imme- 
diately to subverting the constitution in good earnest." These two 
Tory writers were honoured, I think, in the following reign, by 
having their works publicly burnt by the common hangman ; and 
Drake died in gaol in great misery ; though neither, perhaps, graced 
the wooden ruff, nor were they, like the detracting Tutchin, tied 
to a cart- tail, and publicly flogged down Dorchester streets for their 
writings. 



140 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

The elections being over, the Parliament assembled on Dec. 30, 
1701, when Mr. Harley, a Tory confederate, was chosen Speaker, 
in opposition to Sir Thomas Littleton, a court, or perhaps, more 
properly, a King's candidate ; for the court, properly so called, was 
as completely under the control of the Tories as the House of 
Commons had been. The Tories still held all the offices of the 
government, and used the power so conferred, in the small or rotten 
boroughs, for the return of members hostile to the true interests of 
their country ; though the Whigs carried all the large independent 
constituencies in their favour. William opened this sixth and last 
Parliament in his accustomed manner, in person ; and in the speech 
from the throne lamented, in woful terms, the contentions and 
bickerings which had disgraced the last Parliament ; and he called 
upon all parties to forego their personal contentions and follow peace; 
as it was his intention and desire to reign over a happy people, 
influencing them only through their affections and better feelings. 
This was, in truth, what it professed to be, a royal speech, a real 
royal speech; for most of these productions are only sham royal 
speeches, contain set words, strung together with as little meaning 
as possible by flippant impertinence; and given insultingly to royalty 
to utter as his own; just as if royalty could not appear before the 
grand council of the nation, but it must appear in full dress in per- 
son, and as a fool in mind; to act, I suppose, as a foil to show off the 
effulgent brightness of the minister, when he appeared. A minister 
requiring such a foil as this, is altogether unworthy of the support 
of the House of Commons; and ought at once to be discarded by 
all honest men, and sent either to Bedlam or to Billingsgate, for 
insulting his sovereign and the people of England. 

So long as the Tudors ruled this kingdom with an iron hand, this 
cavalier treatment of the Commons of England in Parliament 
assembled might do ; for there was no remedy but to submit : all 
was tyranny and coercion then, So long as the Stuarts were pen- 
sioners of France, and received their orders from Louis XIV., Car- 
dinal Mazarin, Madame de Maintenon, or the Duchess of Orleans, 
this farce of opening Parliament might do, and it was quite sufficient 
for the occasion ; for that occasion was a mere mummery. When the 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 141 

King of France could no longer bribe the King, lie bought the people ; 
and when that King of France could reckon 170 of his bought votes 
in the House of Commons ; opening or royal speeches might have 
been considered a farce and a mummery. But William III. did not 
think so ; for he, even with a sold House of Commons, treated the 
majesty of the people of England with respect. What is the House 
of Commons ? Is it a committee of cobblers sitting in solemn con- 
clave to decide whether the representation of the grassy mound of 
Gatton or Old Sarum is worth the sum of £2000 or of £4000? No ! 
the House of Commons is the check imposed by the majesty of the 
people of England upon the royal prerogative of the throne ; and as 
such they are entitled to that amount of respect from the minister 
of the crown which he, flippant puppy or otherwise as he may be, 
may at his peril dare to withhold. The House of Commons are 
not children, and it ought to be made the act of a madman for any 
prime minister to dare to treat that House as children. Let the 
Commons of England look to this. This opening speech by King 
William was such a speech as is seldom heard in the House of 
Commons from the mouth of royalty ; and was generally supposed 
to be composed by that honest man and faithful friend, Lord 
Somers. This speech was considered to be so important, that it 
was printed and framed, and suspended in almost every house, both 
in England and Holland. It made a lasting impression throughout 
the kingdom on the subject of the war with France ; and had a 
great effect for good in support of the national movement against 
that country. 

For the most part, kings' speeches are empty sounds, for all 
ministers are not like Lord Somers ; neither are kings' friends like 
him — faithful, devoted, sincere even in adversity, and capable of 
serving the nation even when out of office. 

The tide of political strife appeared to be ebbing fast, French 
influences to be discarded, and the nation becoming thoroughly 
roused to a sense of its danger, if not degradation ; and this, in a 
great measure, through the pamphlets of Lord Somers and De Foe. 
Both Houses presented addresses against the King of France, the 
late paymaster of the Commons. The Pretender also was attainted, 



142 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

the Protestant succession was confirm ed, and large supplies voted 
for the war. War was commenced with all vigour. De Foe was 
(with Lord Somers I suppose ; for these two had acted together in 
the two Legion Memorials) consulted by the King on some points 
connected with the war ; particularly on De Foe's own scheme of 
carrying the war into the Spanish West Indies, and there attacking 
the Spanish plate fleet on its way to Europe, and so stop the French 
supplies, and increase our own. De Foe's plan was approved of by 
the King, and he, as the projector, was to have some honourable 
and responsible appointment on board ship in the West India 
waters. At this time also the King made an attempt at the union 
of the crowns of England and Scotland, which was a favourite pro- 
ject also with De Foe; who, at this time, published an octavo volume 
on this subject, which volume is professed to be published or printed 
in Edinburgh ; and what would be very convenient for a writer living 
and writing in London, and not knowing Edinburgh printers even 
by name, there is no printer's name attached to the book ; written 
as it was in London, and published in London too, anonymously, 
and as a Scotch book ; with a good dash of jure- divino principles in 
connection with our bishops in the House of Lords, and a certain 
energy of expression as well as of uncompromising principle ; which 
stamps the work, Scotch as it is, to be from the pen of Daniel De 
Foe, citizen of London. At a later period of his life, De Foe became 
familiar enough with both Edinburgh printers and Edinburgh street 
mobs ; but this would be ten years later than the time we are writing 
of; for it is highly probable that at this early period, De Foe had 
undertaken no Scotch commissions for government, He was full 
of West India projects at this time; but all were crushed by the 
lamented and untimely death of his beloved master, friend, patron, 
and king, William III., of blessed, and, to him, glorious memory ; 
a name dear to De Foe ; and one which he never mentioned but 
with high feelings of veneration and gratitude. Poor De Foe ! all 
his prospects of taking some important command on board ship in 
the Spanish West Indies were dashed to the ground on the death 
of William; but nine years later, or in the year 1711, his papers, 
prepared for King William's ministers, were handed over to Queen 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 143 

Anne's government by himself, the original projector or inventor 
of the scheme. 

Poor William had a fall from his horse while hunting at Hampton 
Court, and died from its effects at Kensington about a fortnight after- 
wards ; to the great grief of all honest men and well-wishers of the 
nation's prosperity, and joy and disgusting rejoicing of the French 
rabbledom then pervading all high places within these realms; who 
commemorated the event by such ballad- writings as the following : — 

Illustrious steed [the Horse], to whom a place is given, 
Above the Lion, Bull, or Bear, in heaven. 

And the following, — his horse being called Sorrel, and he having 
reigned twelve years, — became a favourite Tory toast : — 

Well, then, my friends, since things you see, are so, 
Let 's e'en mourn on ; 'twould lessen much our woe 
Had Sorrel stumbled thirteen years ago. 

The lamentable death of William III. was a serious blow to poor 
De Foe ; for by that death all his hopes and prospects were blighted 
for ever. If De Foe had lost his father, he could not have been in 
a more forlorn condition, for he was ruined in all his prospects, and 
his family too ; since the successor, Queen Anne, was only a weak, 
superstitious woman, possessed of a good deal of the narrow bigotry 
of her father, James II. On ascending the throne she should have 
substituted the church is in danger for the Honi soit qui maly pense 
of the royal arms ; and then she would have had her character em- 
blazoned on the panels of her carriages. She — poor, bigoted, narrow- 
minded woman — reigned twelve years, and during the whole term 
the church ivas in danger. But of this in its proper place ; I only 
mention it here to show that the forebodings of poor De Foe were 
not imaginary. He knew well what was before him, which caused 
him to grieve with more heartfelt sincerity for the best of friends, 
the best of patrons, and the most patriotic of kings. De Foe lived 
thirty years after the death of William III. ; and during those thirty 
years he never ceased to lament the loss of the most patriotic king 
that ever sat upon the English throne. In after-life, De Foe never 
heard the memory of William III. treated with indignity or neglect, 



144 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

but he felt it with impatience and annoyance ; for his death he always 
considered to have been a great calamity to England. If William 
had lived, poor De Foe would never have stood on the pillory plat- 
form, or graced Newgate with his presence. With respect to the 
King's death, the apparent cause was a fall from his horse while 
hunting at Hampton Court, by which fall his collar-bone was broken. 
Every attention was paid to the fractured limb, but all in vain ; his 
constitution was broken by the anxieties of his mind occasioned by 
the ingratitude of the people of England ; and if ever king of Eng- 
land died heart-broken, that king was William III. ; the cause of 
all the disquietude of his mind, which sunk his spirits to the tomb, 
being a corrupt House of Commons. Louis XIV. bought a majority 
of that House from the electors, and that brought William to the 
grave at the early age of fifty-two ; it heart-broke him. This untimely 
death took place at Kensington Palace, on March 8, 1702, in the 
fourteenth year of his reign — may I add ? — to the unseemly delight 
of the French or Pretender party, still strong in the kingdom, 
openly and exultingly expressed; to such a pitch had the accursed 
house of Stuart brought the people of England, by their accepting 
of French bribes or pensions. 

Their awkward triumphs openly they sing, 

Insult the ashes of their injur'd King, 

Bejoice at the disasters of his crown, 

And drink the horse's health that threw him down. 

A molehill was the cause of the horse stumbling, which occasioned 
the following toast to be given at Tory dinners, " A health to the 
little gentleman dressed in velvet." 

Another brutal effusion from the French tools, for enslaving and 
degrading England, appeared in a poem entitled the Mourners; which 
probably gave the hint to De Foe to bring out his poem entitled 
the Mock Mourners, which we will shortly refer to, and make large 
extracts from. 

As a contrast to the Tory villainy commonly printed at the time 
we will take an extract from De Foe's work, the Consolidator, as 
expressive of the feeling of all thoughtful people in the kingdom at 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 145 

this time : — " The grief of the usage he had received, the unkind 
treatment he had met with from those very people that brought him 
hither, had sunk so deep upon his spirit that he could never recover 
it; but being very weak in body and mind, and joined to a slight 
hurt he received by a fall from his horse, he died ; to the unspeakable 
regret of all his subjects that wished well to their country." 

We may here pause a little, and inquire what would have been 
the state of England if Charles II. had left a healthy and large family 
of legitimate children, and William III. had never come to this 
kingdom to free us from French influences ? Could we imagine that 
this nation would ever have been brought to the footstool of France 
by French bribes being distributed amongst the English electors ; 
and French pensions being supplied to our kings and members of 
Parliament ; and French prostitutes supplied systematically, on a 
large scale, to kings, princes, statesmen, or ministers, generals and 
admirals; as was the case in the French court at the time of Catharine 
de Medici, and perhaps at a later period of their history ? 

What a misfortune to have a House of Commons so limited in 
its constituency that it may be, as it once was, sold to a hostile 
foreign power, Louis XIV., who paid £1,000,000 for 176 votes in 
the House ; and what a misfortune to have kings so poor, through 
improvidence, as to sell themselves and their people also for French 
money, which was the case when the Stuarts were upon the throne 
of these realms ! Perhaps it may be said that there is no remedy 
for thoughtless improvidence ; for the disease may be said to lie in 
the bone, or blood, or breed of the object afflicted with it. I believe 
it is so ; like begets like ; like marries like, to the end of the chapter; 
and so it must be, I know a remedy, but if I gave it, I should be 
denounced as an atheist, and run down in the street like a mad 
dog : " He's an infidel, that fellow ; he believes in neither God nor 
devil." 

This would be hard service for speaking the truth as an honest 
man — would it not ? Then I would not speak the truth for such 
rewards. No ! it 's nought to me ; but there is a great deal of false 
philosophy preached from certain pulpits, as though a reckless, 
thoughtless, spendthrift prodigality, were the very foundation of 

10 



146 LITE OF DE FOE. 

Christian principle. 1 I say it advisedly, but I will maintain that it 
is the scourge of this land. One will convert the Jews, another 
takes underhand the Gentiles; then there is the new church at 
Jerusalem, to commemorate the mercies of the Crimean war ; then 
there is the South Sea and the North Sea, the Lapland mission ; 
South Africa, Interior of Africa, West Africa ; and now, with that 
worthy man in the East of Africa, Dr. Livingston; Bibles for 
Turkey, Bibles for Arabia, Sunday Schools at home and Sunday 
Schools abroad ; Home Missions, Church Missions, Wesleyan Mis- 
sions, Baptist Missions, with Arabian Missions ; and last, though 
not least, 5,000,000 Bibles for India ! and the money to be col- 
lected by interested paid agents. Now, all these objects, and a score 
more, are all good, very good ; but may not the system of preach- 
ing for this, and collecting for that — as though preaching the gospel 
were a conspiracy against the pocket — till more money is given from 
the family stock than can be spared with justice or prudence, be 
carried too far ? It is all very well for a man who has nothing, and 
never had anything, and never will have anything (for he saves 
nothing), to preach up this charity, and that, Sunday by Sunday, 
till his hearers are dragged down to the same level of poverty as him- 
self, and the wives and children of those hearers are left at last a 
legacy of paupers to the public ; on which that public may exercise 
the Christian principle of giving, by maintaining the wife and rear- 
ing the children. Many dissenting ministers are very badly paid, 
but they have themselves in a great measure to thank for it. They 
preach for everything, for which money can be paid in the way of 

1 I have heard two eminent men in London, Mr. Spurgeon and Dr. Cumming, run 
foul of the first principles of political economy in their pulpits. Dr. Cumming's Sermon 
on Education was, perhaps, the very best I ever beard in my life, but the philosophy 
was unsound ; for the reverend doctor informed his audience, that teaching a child to 
give is the first duty of a parent : a proposition I utterly deny or dispute. It is such 
teaching as this that brings so much prodigality and bankruptcy into the country. 
Generosity is a very agreeable sort of feeling; but, if the individual practising the 
virtue have nothing to bestow, what is the exercise of the principle worth ? There is 
something rotten in the present state of British society, and I believe it proceeds from 
this kind of preaching ; the country swarms with cant generosity, quirk, fraud, and 
bankruptcy. Britain subscribes to every tiling in the world, corporeal or spiritual, and 
yet is too poor to educate her own children ; therefore the government has to do it. 
What does this mean? Is the conventicle likely to prove too strong for the steeple-house? 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 147 

Christian charity or benevolence; and the congregation in some 
cases becomes exhausted, and patience is run down; then, when 
the real honest demand comes for the support of this begging minis- 
ter, he forms a twentieth or a thirtieth share of the spare cash fund, 
and his payment is considered too little, scrubby, mean, penurious, 
worldly-minded, avaricious ; when vexation, disappointment, separa- 
tion of pastor and flock, follow, all for want of common sense on the 
part of the preacher. Thus this begging system may be a great 
national evil, in causing respectability of station in society to be the 
national standard, rather than the old honourable limit of what can 
be afforded ? And if the standard in religious matters be that of 
appearances, respectability, or position in society, worldly arrange- 
ments will speedily follow in the same track, and then the whole 
national measure becomes a false measure in everything, social, reli- 
gious, and political. All is respectability in position — false, hollow, 
and rotten to the very heart : flash gentility and respectability are 
alone thought of; and every kind of deception, in every trade and 
profession, is practised, to keep up the game of appearances, and 
look respectable. This respectability principle is doing sad mischief 
at this time in British society ; and is the cause of many a decent, 
thoughtful, well-meaning poor fellow being dragged to a gaol for debts 
contracted by his family, in their endeavours to make him appear as 
liberal, benevolent, and respectable as the Clarks, Smiths, Thom- 
sons, Johnsons, and Jacksons, who reside in the same street. 

So much for the improvement of the people ; now for the sove- 
reign. What is the remedy here ? — A thorough reform in the repre- 
sentation in the House of Commons. This is a truly royal measure, 
for it would make the ruling sovereign king of millions rather than 
king of thousands, and would bring down the little squeezing-in im- 
pertinences of small aristocracy, (and how very pleasant that would 
be for royalty !) and the insufferable dictation of some three or four 
families, who think themselves patentees of all legislation in Great 
Britain ! When we speak of reform, we mean real, substantial, 
honest reform, and not a quibbling shuffling of the cards of chances, 
or calculations of how much shadow may be obtained from how 
little substance ; for some of the reform measures are not calculated 

10* 



148 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

by the great but by the small; for the smaller the quantity, the 
better for the fostering the little coterie, the skilled artificers of the 
little measure. A corrupt House of Commons killed William III.; 
— yes, wore him out, exhausted and finished in body, at the early 
age of fifty- two ! Let this fact not be forgotten, for it is a great, 
a mighty fact, for the people of England to reflect upon. What 
reform is required ? — The widest possible extension of the elective 
franchise, with short parliaments, and widely extended electoral 
districts ; and what ? — a removal of placemen and pensioners 
from the House of Commons. This is reform ; and anything less is 
deception. Royalty is as much interested in such a measure of the 
House of Commons, as ever the millions of Britain can be; for 
the dealing out of favours through the Lord Chamberlain's Office, 
to keep the wheels of legislation properly greased, can be no parti- 
cularly grateful task to royalty. All the family of the Miss Clarks 
must be invited, and their pert, upstart, coxcomb of a brother with 
them ! If this is not passing royalty through a small sieve, I do 
not know what is. The sooner this state purgatory is got rid of, the 
better, for the domestic comfort of the sovereign ; and this cannot 
be done but by a brushing at once all placemen and pensioners 
from the House of Commons. This is rather a long digression ; but 
a king of England, and the most patriotic of all kings of England, 
to be killed, worn out, at the early age of fifty-two years, will 
warrant the digression, long as it may appear to be. 

A corrupt House of Commons killed William III. ! On the 
death of the King, and on the vile ingratitude that accompanied it 
from those whom William had raised to honours, and fed during his 
lifetime, merely to be reviled and slandered when dead, De Foe came 
out, in prose and verse, with terrific violence; and his poem, entitled 
the Mock Mourners, taken no doubt from the vile Tory poem, en- 
titled the Mourners, shall have a due share of attention, as it well 
deserves: — 

Such has been this ill-natur'd nation's fate, 
Always to see their friends and foes too late ; 
By native pride and want of temper led, 
Never to value merit till 'tis dead ; 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 149 

And then immortal monuments they raise, 
And damn their former follies by their praise ; 
With just reproaches rail at their own vice, 
And mourn for those they did before despise. 
So they who Moses' government defied, 
Sincerely sorrow' d for him when he died. 
And so when Britain's genius fainting lay, 
Summon'd by death, which monarchs must obey, 
Trembling and soulless half the nation stood, 
Upbraided by their own ingratitude. 

William the bottom of their courage found 
False, like themselves, mere emptiness and sound ; 
For, call'd by fate to fight for Christendom, 
They sent their King abroad, and staid at home j 
Wisely declin'd the hazard of the war, 
To nourish faction and disorders here. 
Wrapt in luxurious plenty, they debauch, 
And load their active monarch with reproach ; 
Backward in deeds, but of their censures free, 
And slight the actions which they dare not see. 
At home they bravely teach him to command, 
And judge of what they are afraid to mend; 
Against the hand that saves them they exclaim, 
And curse the strangers, though they fight for them. 
Though some, who would excuse the matter, say, 
They did not grudge their service , but their -pay. 
Where are the royal bands that now advance, 
To spread his dreadful banners into France ? 
Britannia's noble sons her interest fly, 
And foreign heroes must their place supply. 
Much for the fame of our nobility. 
Posterity will be asham'd to hear 
Great Britain's monarch did in arms appear, 
And scarce an English nobleman was there. 
Ye sons of envy, railers at the times, 
Be bold, like Englishmen, and own your crimes ; 
For shame put on no black, but let us see 
Your habit always and your tongues agree : 



150 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Envy ne'er blushes. Let it not be said 

You hate him living, and you mourn him dead. 

No sorrow show, where you no love profess ; 

There are no hypocrites in wickedness. 

Great bonfires make, and tell the world y' are glad 

Y' have lost the greatest blessing e'er you had. 

So madmen sing in nakedness and chains, 

For when the sense is gone, the song remains. 

So thoughtless Israel, when they were set free, 

Keproacht the author of their liberty, 

And wisht themselves in Egypt back again. 

What pity 'twas they wisht, or wisht in vain ! 

With what contempt will Englishmen appear, 

When future ages read his character ! 

They '11 never bear to hear, in time to come, 

How he was lov'd abroad and scorn'd at home ; 

The world will scarce believe it could be true, 

And vengeance must such insolence pursue. 

Our nation will by all men be abhorr'd, 

And William's juster fame be so restor'd. 

Posterity, when histories relate 

His glorious deeds, will ask — What giant 's that ? 

For common virtues may men's fame advance, 

But an immoderate glory turns romance ; 

Its real merit does itself undo, 

Men talk it up so high, it can't be true. 

So William's life, increased by doubling fame, 

Will drown his actions to preserve his name ; 

The annals of his conduct they '11 revise, 

As legends of impossibilities. 

'Twill all a life of miracles appear, 

Too great for him to do, or them to hear. 

And if some faithful writer should set down 

With what uneasiness he wore the crown t 

What thankless devil had the land possest ; 

This will be more prodigious than the rest. 

With indignation 't will their minds inspire, 

And raise the glory of his actions higher. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 151 

The records of their fathers they '11 deface, 
And blush to think they sprung from such a race ; 
They '11 be asham'd their ancestors to own, 
And strive their fathers' follies to atone. 
New monuments of gratitude they '11 raise, 
And crown his memory with thanks and praise. 

But we have here an ignominious crowd, 
That boast their native birth and English blood ; 
Whose breasts with envy and contention burn, 
And now rejoice when all the nations mourn ; 
Their awkward triumphs openly they sing ; 
Insult the ashes of their injur'd King ; 
Eejoice at the disasters of his crown, 
And drink the horse's health that threw Mm down. 

Queen Anne ascended the throne on the 8th of March, 1702, and 
from that day to the day of her death, showed herself the true 
daughter of James II. With her the church was always falling; 
and all aspirants to place, favour, or power, could not take more 
effectual means for attaining their ends than follow the cry of " the 
church is in danger." 

Prom whence we now inform the people, 

The danger of the church is from the steeple. 

And we've had many a bitter stroke 

From pinnacle and weather-cock ; 

From whence the learned do relate, 

That, to secure the church and state, 

The time will come when all the town, 

To save the church, will pull the steeple down. 

Queen Anne was emphatically a narrow-minded, bigoted woman ; 
the tool of ambitious priests, who wished to protect or increase 
ecclesiastical power and ecclesiastical wealth, at the expense of the 
great body of the community. Anne was no sooner seated upon 
the throne than she dismissed all who were in any manner treated 
with kindness by the late sovereign : the Lords Somers and Halifax, 
two of William's confidential ministers and friends, were at once 
removed from the Privy Council, and with them the whole party of 



152 LTFE OF DE FOE. 

Whigs were expelled from office,, to make way for their opponents ; 
and those opponents chosen from the most active antagonists of 
William's late ministers and friends, for every department of the 
government was filled by parties so selected —selected according to 
their hatred or opposition to the late King ; and even the lieutenancy 
in the several counties was changed, together with the most sub- 
altern officers in every department of government, and all thrown 
into the scale of the Church of England— altogether party; as 
though all dissent would be completely stifled by this partial dis- 
pensing of government patronage. This is a specimen of state 
education ; this is altogether a meddling with the religious teaching 
of the country, when neither police-officer, excise nor custom-house 
officer, can be selected but on the terms — " Church or chapel — 
steeple-house or conventicle?" "Are you Dutch Presbyterian, 
Muggletonian, or Calvinist?" "Down with the Presbyterians" 
became as much a feeling, if not a Tory cry, as on the restoration of 
Charles II. ; and this, too, equally among both the clergy and the 
laity : all was revelry and party triumph, for the conventicle would 
go now ; for our Queen boasted before her Parliament that she had 
" a heart entirely English." Yes, she was thoroughly church and 
state, and no Dutch conventicle-mongered Presbyterian. Every- 
thing seemed fast approaching to the state of the first days of 
Charles II., when the "old religion appeared to be coming back 
again," as was judged by the old women who saw the Maypoles 
and Sunday revelry return. 

In De Foe's Review, published some years from this time, an 
account is given from time to time of these proceedings ; and in the 
second volume of that scarce and valuable work the following record 
occurs : — " No sooner was King William dead, and the Queen come 
to the crown, but the gentlemen of the High Church, mistaking her 
Majesty in this, as well as in all the rest of her meaning, began to 
lay the same foundation of riotous triumph as formerly : for they 
looked on the Queen's coming to the crown as a mere restoration, 
and were resolved it should restore the crimes as well as the person; 
of whom they began to value themselves on account of the line, 
and the divine right of succession : universal revels filled their 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 153 

houses, and general drunkenness began to revive. And I appeal to 
common knowledge, if in the first half-year of her present Majesty 
almost all the Maypoles in England were not repaired and re-edified, 
new painted, new hung with garlands, and beautified ? And whether 
there were not more new Maypoles erected than had been in twenty 
years before ? Let any man, as he goes through a town having a 
fine painted Maypole, inquire when it was last repaired or set up, 
and I hold five to one that 'tis answered in the year 1702. And 
what was the meaning of it ? Not that they could see any hopes, 
in the example of her Majesty, to think this vice of drunkenness 
and revelling should receive any encouragement there. The con- 
stant practice of the Queen must stop the mouth of such a scandal ; 
and if they had discretion little enough to think so, her Majesty 
has given them room enough to find their mistake. But the case 
is plain : they thought the day their own at court, and away they 
went with the mistake, and immediately fell to concerting measures 
with the people. Upon this proceeding, up went the Maypoles, 
that the church's health might be drunk, till the people not only 
knew not what they did, but might be ready to do they knew not 
what, to the demolishing the church's pretended enemies, the dis- 
senters, and pulling down all manner of union in the nation. Nor 
were the Maypoles in the towns only ; but one would have thought 
they had had Maypoles in their heads too, for no men but such as 
were bewildered in their understandings could have been so weak 
as to think that when her Majesty recommended to them the care 
of the church, of religion, and the general safety, that, therefore, 
all the revelling, the liberty, and a loose to all manner of riot, 
must be the first demonstration of their obedience to the Queen's 
command. 1 " 

1 While on this important subject of Maypoles, and their test of loyalty or 
ehurchism as opposed to Muggletonianism or Dutchism, I will quote a mural 
black-letter inscription placed against the wall immediately within the enclosure 
of the communion-table or railing in a church in Yorkshire, repaired in the time of 
James I. by Sir William Craven, Knight, a native of Applebreewick, in the above 
county : — 

(: Sir William Craven, London's twice lord mayor, 
Thy deeds of charity to us most rare ; 



154 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Things began to wear a very serious aspect, as they do, when a 
weak, innocent, confiding woman falls by accident into the hands of 
wicked and designing men. The Queen soon found her position to 
be as dangerous as inconvenient, for by these demonstrations of 
party triumph she was effectually alienating the affections of one 
half of her people ; so she, as De Foe observes in the page follow- 
ing the one just quoted, "upon the discovery of their error, her 
Majesty found a necessity, first, gently, with her usual goodness and 
clemency, to admonish and exhort them to peace and union, and to 
live in amity and charity with their brethren. To remove the alarm 
which their presumption had caused among the dissenters, who, not 
without good grounds, began to look for a storm of persecution, as 
well as civil oppression, her Majesty found it convenient to give the 
dissenters a public assurance of her royal protection, and on all 
occasions to mention her gracious resolution to preserve the tolera- 
tion, which her Majesty saw was necessary to secure that entire 
confidence in her general care, which wise princes have found neces- 
sary to preserve in all their subjects." 

It is supposed that the Prince Consort (George Prince of Den- 
mark) , the Duke of Marlborough, and Lord Godolphin, had the whole 

Our church, our school, bridges, or Maypole, 
Express thy bounty to us every hour. 
Pray for that noble family, whose race 
May to eternity extend its space." 

The above was painted in black distemper on the whitewashed wall at the time when 
Lord William Craven, son of the above benefactor, was living, a field-marshal, and 
patron of one mediety of Bumsall rectory, and husband to Elizabeth, Queen of 
Bohemia, whose interests James I. always neglected, through his divine-right-of-kings 
principles. This Queen of Bohemia was the ancestress of the Elector of Hanover, 
George I., a relationship which brought the house of Hanover to this kingdom on 
the death of Queen Anne. William Lord Craven, Baron of Hampstead, marshal, was 
patron of the other mediety of the rectory of Bumsall. Sir William Craven built, or 
rebuilt, a parish church, and he built and endowed a school with £40 per annum. He 
built Burnsall Bridge, and, I suppose, Hartlington Bridge, too ; for he built bridges ; 
and, in addition to these, he erected the Maypole on the village-green, before the Eed 
Lion ; and this erection of the Maypole was worthy of being recorded on a tablet over 
the communion-table, where it remains to this day. Yes ; he erected the Maypole ! 
which means, I suppose, he was loyal — church and state, King James I., with the 
Spanish ambassador, the Spanish match, and Sunday sports ; he was no white-choked, 
psalm-singing Muggletonian : he built the Maypole. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 155 

responsibility of freeing the Queen from the perilous position into 
which the Tories of her ministry and the House of Commons were 
urging her, to gratify their feelings of hatred to the illustrious me- 
mory of the late King ; and to all conventicle-mongers, Calvinists, 
Dutch Presbyterians, Muggletonians, &c, his bosom friends and 
political supporters ; and also to gratify their love to Louis XIV. 
and his pensioner at the court of St. Germains — the Pretender. All 
was Tory rule and Tory tyranny about the person of the Queen ; and 
nothing but a few true friends of the Queen prevented affairs coming 
to a serious crisis or open rupture between the High-Church party 
and the Protestant dissenters, who were all-powerful as the moneyed 
interest of the nation. The Partition Treaty, perhaps the wisest act 
of William's reign, met with their especial hostility; yet, Louis 
having supported the claims of the Pretender to the sovereignty of 
these realms, war was declared by Great Britain against France and 
Spain; when 14,000 men were sent against Cadiz, but returned to 
this kingdom without effecting a landing. This expedition was 
placed under the command of Admiral Sir George Rooke and the 
Duke of Ormond: the admiral showing either incapacity or treachery, 
which produced universal disgust throughout the nation, and caused 
a good deal of lampooning to be thrown upon the public ; and among 
the poets appeared Daniel De Foe, in the " Spanish Descent " : — 

Ten years we felt the dying pangs of war, 

And fetch'd our griefs and miseries from far. 

Our English millions foreign war maintains, 

And English blood has drencht the neighbouring plains. 

Nor shall we blush to boast what all men own, 

Uncommon English valour has been shown ; 

The forward courage of our ill-paid men 

Deserves more praise than nature spares my pen. 

And now the baffled enterprise grows stale ; 

Their hopes decrease, and juster doubts prevail. 

The unattempted town sings victory, 

And scar'd with walls, and not with men, they fly. 

Great conduct in our safe retreat we show, 

And bravely re-embark when none pursue ; 



156 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

The guns, the ammunition 's put on board ; 
And what we could not plunder we restord. 
And thus we quit the Andalusian shores, 

Drencht with the Spanish wine and Spanish w s. 

With songs of scorn the Arragonians sing, 
And loud Te Deums make the valleys ring. 

Meanwhile our melancholy fleet steers home ; 

Some griev'd for past, for future mischiefs some. 

Disaster swells the blood, and spleen the face, 

And ripens them for glorious things apace. 

With deep regret they turn their eyes to Spain, 

And wish they once might visit her again. 

Little they dreamt that good which Heaven prepar'd ! 

No merit from below, no signs from heaven appear'd ; 

No hints, unless from their high ripen'd spleen, 

And strange ungrounded sympathy within. 

The silent Duke [Ormond] from all misconduct free, 

Alone enjoys the calm of honesty : 

Fears not his journal should be fairly shown, 

And sighs for England's errors — not his own. 

His constant temper 's all serene and clear ; 

Fir 'st, free from guilt, and therefore free from fear . 

The above poem truly represents the national feelings, loudly 
expressed, upon the most inglorious expedition ever fitted out in 
Great Britain at any period, either before or since; and so great 
was the national disgust, and so loudly expressed, that the reluctant 
Admiral Sir George Rooke — obliged to attempt something before 
sailing for England, for he dare not face the national reception 
awating him on his return — faced about for Vigo harbour, where 
some Spanish galleons richly laden, with some French ships, lay 
unprepared for an attack, and in repose and security, as they sup- 
posed. These were attacked, taken, or destroyed ; which success 
afforded seasonable relief in glory to the admiral, and also to the 
ministry at home, who were strongly suspected to be favourable to 
the interests of the Pretender, supported as he was by France and 
Spain. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 157 

All this success changed the temper of the people at home, and 
from despair and despondency, all was changed to acclamations and 
rejoicings, at the success of the national arms; which caused De 
Foe, amongst the national poets, to change his tune to a song of 
rejoicing; as will be seen from the conclusion of the poem, as 
follows : — 

And now the victory 's completely gain'd, 

No ships to conquer now, no foes remain'd. 

The mighty spoils exceed what e'er was known, 

That vanquish'd ever lost, or victor won. 

So great, if Fame shall future times remind, 

They '11 think she lyes and libels all mankind. 

Well may the pious Queen new anthems raise, 

Sing her own fortunes, and her Maker's praise ; 

Invite the nation willing thanks to pay ; 

And well may all the mighty ones obey. 

So may they sing, be always so preserv'd, 

By grace unwished, and conquest undeserv'd. 

Now let us welcome home the conquering fleet, 

And all their well-aton'd mistakes forget; 

Such high success should all resentments drown'd, 

Nothing but joy and welcome should be found. 

No more their past miscarriages reprove ; 

But bury all in gratitude and love. 

Let their high conduct have a just regard, 

And meaner merit meet a kind reward. 

But now what fruits of victory remain ? 

To Heaven what praise, what gratitude to man ! 

Let France sing praise for shams of victories, 

And mock their Maker with religious lies : 

But England, blest with thankful hearts, shall raise 

For mighty conquests mighty songs of praise. 

She needs no false pretences to deceive ; 

What all men see, all men must needs believe. 

Our joy can hardly run into excess ; 

The well-known subject all our foes confess ; 

We can't desire more, they can pretend no less. 



158 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



Ann e > like her great progenitor, sings praise; 

Like her she conquers, and like her she prays : 

Like her she graces and protects the throne, 

And counts the land's prosperity her own ; 

Like her, and long like her, be bless'd to reign, 

Crown'd with new conquests, and more fleets from Spain. 

See now the royal chariot comes amain 

With all the willing nation in her train ; 

With humble glory, and with solemn grace, 

Queen in her eyes, and Christian in her face. 

With her, her represented subjects join ; 

And when she prays, th' whole nation says, Amen. 

With her, in stalls, th' illustrious nobles sat, 

The cherubims and seraphims of state ; 

Anne, like a comet, in the centre shone, 

And they like stars that circumfere the sun. 

She great in them, and they as great in her, 

Sure Heaven will such illustrious praises hear. 

The crowding millions hearty blessings pour ; 

Saint Paul ne'er saw but one such day before. 

According to constitutional appointment, a new Parliament was 
summoned within six months of the Queen's accession to the throne ; 
and this Parliament, as might have been expected, was thoroughly 
Tory in its composition ; for every artifice was resorted to for se- 
curing a Tory majority; and the whole weight of the court and 
government was unscrupulously given for the attainment of this 
end, at all hazards and costs. The first act of this unscrupulous 
assemblage was to cast a reflection of slight upon the late King 
William of blessed memory, the most patriotic sovereign that Eng- 
land had ever known ; for in the address from the House, in answer 
to the speech from the throne on the opening of this Parliament, 
her Majesty was congratulated on her success in the Spanish inva- 
sion ; the investing of Cadiz ! where " she had signally retrieved — 
[retrieved /] the ancient honour and glory of the English nation." 
Such is Tory loyalty. 

This session was opened in a bad Tory spirit of meanness and 
detraction ; for ingratitude to the memory of William III. was 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 159 

about the standard of their morality. To the reigning sovereign all 
was adulatory meanness and subserviency ; and to such a pitch was 
the jure-divino worship carried, that the royal touch for the King's 
evil, or scrofula, was revived. Charles II. was the last saint who 
had done business in this way ; he having during his reign laid 
his saintly hand on 100,000 impotent and afflicted objects. As for 
William, he being only a Dutch Presbyterian, and mistrusting his 
own powers of working miracles, did not go through the imposing 
ceremony. In the north of England, some of the old ladies believe 
that the act of confirmation is a specific for the rheumatism. I have 
not been able to trace the origin of this foolish superstition ; but 
certainly, without I had good authority for so doing, I should not 
take it further back than the superstitious reign of Queen Anne. 

At the commencement of this reign the established clergy, on all 
occasions, extolled the sacred virtues of royalty at the expense of 
the Presbyterians and the conventicles. Every public anniversary 
where loyalty to the sovereign could be paraded, to set off the 
preacher as some especial defender of the faith, the occasion was 
never missed ; and every church pulpit resounded with anathemas 
against the Commonwealth, Cromwell, and the murderers of the 
royal martyr, Charles L, with all chapels, preachers, and Whigs ; 
with rapturous praises of hereditary sovereigns, and their divine 
right to ride rough-shod, by God's appointment, over all ordinary 
sort of people ; who had no remedy but to sit down, and to submit 
to these happy dispensations of Providence, with placid and con- 
tented minds ; rejoicing in being called to bear testimony to God's 
ordinances by a servile submission to hereditary rule. During all 
this preaching, poor William, the late King, came in for a few hard 
knocks, by way of comparison with the power then in existence, or 
then ruling ; these 30th of January anniversary preachers always 
keeping one principle in view, that where a bird in the hand is repre- 
sented to be worth two in the bush. Poor Willam was done — gone 
— dead and buried ; he, poor fellow, had no patronage to bestow ; no 
deaneries — no bishoprics. No ! he was only a dead Dutchman, inter- 
loper, or usurper. Pamphlets at this time were written on all sides 
with the greatest violence ; Leslie, Drake, L'Estrange, Sacheverell, 



160 LIFE OP DE FOE. 

and others, taking, as before, the lead on the side of the hereditary 
right of kings to rule, and the duty of people to submit at all costs, 
even with loss of property, or of life itself; while, as opponents to 
this slavish doctrine — a doctrine unworthy of men calling themselves 
free — stood out Daniel De Foe and one or two others, for at this time 
De Foe brought out his pamphlet entitled A New Test of the Church 
of England's Loyalty ; or, Whiggish Loyalty and Church Loyalty 
compared. This tract was forced into existence by the violent and 
slavish doctrines preached in all anniversary sermons where politics 
could by any possibility be introduced ; and these occasions were of 
daily occurrence, in which the clergy and the Tories in power seemed 
to take revenge upon the dissenters for all the disasters which the 
whole house of Stuart for four generations had, in their folly — for 
they were a foolish, silly race, from James I. downwards — brought 
upon themselves. 

Well, in this war of steeple-house versus conventicle, all was vio- 
lence of such a nature as to threaten an open outbreak of persecution 
in the nation, under pretence of the " church being in danger" ; and 
had it not been for the Prince Consort, and one or two other sober- 
minded people about the Queen, checking the outbreak as well as they 
could, and keeping a tight hand upon the weak monarch, there would 
have been an outbreak in this nation on the Church of England's 
pretensions; and the consequence would have been — for the dis- 
senters were all-powerful as the moneyed interest in the kingdom — 
that Queen Anne would have had to run for. her life to France, there 
to end her days a pensioner of France, as her father and most of her 
family had done before her. The clergy did their best to bring such 
a catastrophe about ; and they would have succeeded, if the Prince 
Consort had not possessed so much sense and influence over the 
weak-minded, bigoted daughter of James IT. as to prevent it. Anne 
was an unwise woman ; and if she had married a fool like herself, 
she must have left her kingdom in disgrace, and ended her days 
an outcast, to become a pensioner on the court of Louis XIV. at 
St. Germains, under the same roof as her brother, the Pretender. 

This was about the first appearance of that firebrand of a defender 
of a priestly domination, the notorious Sacheverell of a later period, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 161 

who preached a sermon before the University of Oxford, and after- 
wards published it, with the sanction or imprimatur of the vice- 
chancellor, under the title of the Political Union, in which the 
church militant, not of Christ, but of England, was placed above the 
power of the state. He considers it to be " the greatest reproach 
and scandal upon our church, however others may be seduced and 
misled, that any pretending to that sacred and inviolable character 
of being her true sons, pillars, and defenders, should turn such apos- 
tates and renegadoes to their oaths and professions, such false traitors 
to their trusts and offices, as to strike sail to such a party, that is 
such an open and avowed enemy to our communion, and against 
whom every man that wishes its welfare ought to hang out the 
bloody flag and banner of defiance." 

Bravo ! for the vice-chancellor of Oxford ! He was playing the 
French game with a vengeance ; and if the Prince Consort had not 
possessed more discretion and more influence over the narrow- 
minded woman, Queen Anne, than her other advisers, the throne 
would have found itself to be in danger ; for, although the high- 
priests and rabble were in partnership here, as on another memo- 
rable occasion, yet the moneyed interest of England in 1702 being 
altogether in the hands of the dissenters ; and concentrated in the 
city of London, and in the other large towns of the north and west 
of England, would have been more than a match for the vice-chan- 
cellor of Oxford and his firebrand the preacher ; even if these two 
had possessed the confidence and power of the court, as well as the 
personal well-wishes of the Queen herself. A little indiscretion 
here, and the last of the race of the Stuarts must have gone, and 
Queen Anne fled her country an outcast. The throne was truly in 
danger, and one man in the country saw that, and perhaps but one 
man, and that man was Daniel De Foe ; and he placed the keystone 
in the arch of folly, by publishing shortly after this period his 
Shortest Way with the Dissenters. We must take the proper order 
of events ; and, although the Shortest Way did appear in this strife 
of parties, it was not till some few months after the point of time 
we are now occupied upon ; for the notice already given of the 

11 



162 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

pamphlet on Church -of- England loyalty, and a comparison between 
it and Whig loyalty made, must be followed up with a few quota- 
tions, to show the nature of that work. 

" In all the unhappy contentions among parties and factions in 
this brangling nation, the champions of the Church of England, as 
they would have themselves call'd, have laid it down as the distin- 
guishing mark of their hierarchy, that it is her practice, and has 
been derived from her very constitution, as well as doctrine, to fix 
in all her members principles of unshaken loyalty to her Prince, 
entire and undisputed obedience to all her commands, and an ab- 
horrence of the very thoughts of those hellish principles, that it can 
be lawful on any account whatsoever to resist the established power 
of their kings. 

« 'Twould be endless to quote the Rev. Dr. B — ge, who, from the 
text in the 13th of the Romans, and verses 1, 2, ' Resist not the 
powers, &c, for whatsoever powers are, be ordained of God/ tells us : 
' That if the King should by his royal command execute the greatest 
violence upon either our persons or estate, our duty was to submit 
by prayers and tears first to God Almighty, to turn the wrath of his 
vicegerent from his servant, and by humble entreaty to beg his 
Majesty's grace and pardon; but to lift up the hand against the 
Lord's anointed, or resist the evil of punishment he thought fit to 
inflict, this were a crime unpardonable either before God or man ; 
and a crime (says the reverend doctor) which we bless God the very 
principles of our ever-loyal mother, the Church of England, abhors 
and detests/ 

" ' Let incendiaries, fanaticks, and bloody peace-breaking Whigs/ 
says another learned divine, ' nourish the vip'rous principles of 
treason and rebellion ; and let them meet their due reward of their 
factious doings in the resentments of a righteous but provoked nation. 
But, God be praised, our mother, the Church of England, has always 
brought up her sons in an unspotted loyalty and obedience ; none 
have been found lifting up their hands against their sovereign, or 
possessing the right of the anointed of God/ " &c. &c. 

This tract proceeds to the extent of twenty pages in this strain ; 



LIFE OF DE FOE, 163 

and of course no extract of a single page can do justice to the per- 
formance ; for it is very ably written, as all De Foe's tracts were % 
and of course it produced a geat sensation at the time. 

Upon Nov. 4, in this year,. Mr. Bromley and Mr. Annesley, mem- 
bers for the two universities, and Mr. St. John, afterwards Lord 
Bolingbroke, brought in a bill for preventing occasional conformity 
on the part of Protestant dissenters, which was a Tory or High- 
Church process for persecuting, by excluding from all offices of trust 
or honour all Protestant dissenters ; and this act was supported by 
all the power of the High-Church party connected with the govern- 
ment, or in the House ; and for this act Prince George of Den- 
mark (the Prince Consort), was obliged to vote, though at the time 
he said to Lord Wharton, when rising to divide, " My heart is 
vid you." 

It was with them ; for he was a Lutheran and an occasional con- 
formist himself. Luckily for the Queen, the bishops in the House 
of Lords were the chief cause of saving her throne by their mode- 
ration ; for they were all moderate men, and of William's appoint- 
ment. We rail at bishops sitting in the House of Lords ; but here 
they saved the nation from an act which would neither have added 
to the dignity nor perhaps the safety of the throne : for the spirit 
of persecution on the part of the High- Church party was raised 
to the highest pitch ; for Whigs, Presbyterians, the ministry, and 
even the Queen herself was the object of attack from the church 
pulpits ; with long and exciting harangues on the Cromwell times, 
and the sufferings of Charles I. The Bishops and Lords clogged 
this bill with amendments, in order to cause its rejection in the 
Commons, in which they succeeded ; for the bill was lost. All was 
excitement during the time this bill was in Parliament, and pamph- 
lets swarmed on all hands; and among the writers of the latter 
stood out foremost Daniel De Foe in another pamphlet, published 
at this time, and entitled An Enquiry into Occasional Conformity, 
shewing that the Dissenters are no way concerned in it. In taking 
up this subject as a writer, De Foe stood nearly alone on his side of 
the question; for he had a vast majority both of preachers and 
writers against him ; but yet he felt satisfied, though in the mi- 
ll* 



164 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

nority, as conscious of having truth on his side; for he tells his 
opponents, that they were welcome to all the converts made by the 
mammon of unrighteousness. 

The Occasional Conformity Bill of Mr. Bromley and his party of 
Tackers, in the Commons,is given here as a specimen of the House of 
Commons when acting under French influences, though not French 
pay ; for we were at war with France at this time, and consequently 
unpaid, though living and acting in hope of better times from French 
patronage : those times to be when James III. could be reinstated 
on the throne of his father by the power of France ; and England 
be reduced to a French province again by French money, distributed 
among members of the House of Commons for French interests 
exclusively, to the exclusion of British interests — a state of things 
which had existed through a great portion of the reign of William 
and Mary of glorious memory ; and which was anxiously expected, 
on a return to French influences under James III., by a great 
majority of the House of Commons of 1702, 1703, and 1704 — the 
first Parliament of Queen Anne. The bill is given as sent up to 
the Lords, and without the amendments of the Lords, introduced as 
softening clauses or additions, in various places. 

" As nothing is more contrary to the profession of the Christian 
religion, and particularly to the doctrine of the Church of England, 
than persecution for conscience only; in due consideration whereof 
an act passed in the first year of the reign of the late King William 
and Queen Mary, entitled c An Act for exempting their Majesties' 
Protestant subjects dissenting from the Church of England from 
the Penalties of certain Laws/ which act ought inviolably to 
be observed, and ease given to all consciences truly scrupulous. 
But, nevertheless, whereas the laws do provide that every person 
to be admitted into any office or employment should be con- 
formable to the church, as it is by law established ; by enacting, 
that every such person so to be admitted should receive the sacra- 
ment of the Lord's Supper according to the rites and usage of 
the Church of England ; yet several persons dissenting from the 
church as it is by law established, do join with the members thereof 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 165 

in receiving the Lord's Supper to qualify themselves to have and 
enjoy such offices and employments; and do afterwards resort 
to conventicles or meetings, for the exercise of religion in other 
manner than according to the liturgy and practice of the Church of 
England ; which is contrary to the intent and meaning of the laws 
already made : Be it therefore enacted by the Queen's most excel- 
lent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords 
spiritual and temporal, and the Commons in Parliament assembled, 
and by authority of the same; that if any person or persons, after 
the first day of March which shall be in the year of our Lord 1702, 
either Peers or Commons, who have [Mark ! it was on Feb. 21, 
1702, that his Majesty had the misfortune to break his collar-bone, 
while hunting at Hampton Court; the accident which was the appa- 
rent cause of his Majesty's death] or shall have any office or offices, 
civil or military, or receive any pay, salary, fee, or wages, by reason 
of any patent or grant from her Majesty, or shall have any com- 
mand or place of trust from or under her Majesty, or from any of 
her Majesty's predecessors, or by her or their authority, derived 
from her or them, within the kingdom of England, dominion of 
Wales, and town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, or in her Majesty's navy, 
or in the several islands of Jersey and Guernsey; or shall be ad- 
mitted into any service or employment in her Majesty's household 
or family ; or if any mayor, alderman, recorder, bailiff, town-clerk, 
common-councilman, or other person bearing any office of magis- 
tracy, or places of trust, or other employment relating to and 
concerning the government of the respective cities, corporations, 
boroughs, cinque-ports, and their members, and other port towns, 
within the kingdom of England, dominion of Wales, and the town 
of Berwick-upon-Tweed, who by the laws are obliged to receive the 
sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites and usage 
of the Church of England, shall at any time after their admission 
into their respective offices or employments, or after having such 
grant as aforesaid, during his or their continuance in such offices, 
or the enjoyment of any profit or advantage from the same, 
knowingly or willingly resort to or be present at any conventicle, 
under colour of any exercise of religion in other manner than ac- 



166 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



cording to the liturgy and practice of the Church of England, in 
any place within the kingdom of England, at which conventicle or 
assembly there shall be five persons or more assembled together, 
over and besides those of the same household, if it be in any house 
or place where there is no person inhabiting, then where any five 
persons or more are so assembled as aforesaid, or shall knowingly 
or willingly be present at any such meeting, in such house or place, 
although the liturgy be there used ; and in case her Majesty (whom 
God long preserve) Katherine Queen Dowager, and the Princess 
Sophia, or such others as shall from time to time be lawfully appointed 
to be prayed for, and shall not be prayed for (viz., in pursuance of the 
act passed in the first year of King William and Queen Mary, en- 
titled c An Act declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject, 
and settling the Succession of the Crown ;' and the act passed in 
the twelfth and thirteenth of King William, entitled ' An Act for 
the further Limitation of the Crown, and better securing the Rights 
and Liberties of the Subject'), in express words, according to the 
liturgy of the Church of England; shall forfeit the sum of one hun- 
dred pounds, and five pounds for every day that any such persons 
shall continue in the execution of such office or employment after 
they shall have been present at any such conventicle; to be recovered 
by him or them, that shall sue for the same, by an action of debt, 
bill, plaint, or information, in any of her Majesty's courts at West- 
minster, wherein no essoign, protection, or wages of law shall be 
allowed, nor more than one imparlance. 

" And be it further enacted, that every person convicted in any 
action, to be brought as aforesaid, or upon any information, pre- 
sentment, or indictment, in any of her Majesty's courts of West- 
minster, or at the assizes, shall be disabled from thenceforth to hold 
such offices or employments, or to receive any profits or advantage 
by reason of them, or of any grant as aforesaid; and shall be adjudged 
incapable to bear any office or employment whatsoever within the 
kingdom of England. Provided always, and be it further enacted, 
that if any person or persons who shall be convicted as aforesaid, 
and thereby made incapable to hold any office or employment, shall 
after such conviction conform to the Church of England for the 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 167 

space of one year without having been present at any conventicle, 
and receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper at least three times 
in the year, every such person or persons shall be capable of a grant 
of any office or employment, or of being elected into or holding any 
the offices or employments aforesaid. Provided also, and be it 
enacted, that every person so convicted, and afterwards conforming, 
shall, at the next term after his admission into any such office, make 
oath in writing, in any of her Majesty's courts at Westminster, in 
public and open court, between the hours of nine of the clock and 
twelve in the forenoon, or at the next quarter sessions for the county 
or place where he shall reside, that he has conformed to the Church 
of England for the space of one year before such his admission, 
without having been present at any conventicle, and that he has 
received the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; which oath shall be 
there enrolled, and kept upon record. Provided also, and be it 
further enacted, that if any person after such his admission into any 
office, shall a second time offend in manner aforesaid, and shall be 
thereof lawfully convicted, he shall for such offence incur double the 
penalties aforementioned; to be recovered in manner aforesaid, and 
shall forfeit such office or employment, and shall not be capable of 
having any office or employment until he have conformed for the 
space of three years, in the manner aforesaid; whereof oath shall be 
made in writing in one of her Majesty's courts at Westminster, or 
at the quarter sessions of the county where he resides." 

Such was the bill for persecuting the dissenters in the years 1702, 
1703, and 1704, the first Parliament of Queen Anne. This bill was 
the pet bill of the House of Commons during the whole three first 
years of Queen Anne's reign: a bill which was carried to the 
Lords again and again, without effect, until the device of tacking it 
to a money bill was resorted to by the Commons. We talk of the 
House of Lords — we talk of the bench of bishops : bishops, indeed ! 
Who stood first in opposition to this tyrannical measure of the 
Commons — of the Mackworths and Howes and Bromleys? Who? 
Fourteen bishops, at the head of whom stood the Lord Archbishop of 
Canterbury. These t ackers of the Commons, numbering 134 mem- 



168 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

bers, were the same class of members who were sold to Louis XIV. 
of France during the previous reign, the French ambassador being 
the purchaser; and were called Poussineers, from Poussin, the 
French agent employed in the purchase; and they numbered, as we 
have previously said, 167. French members bought and paid for 
by the French ambassador for the King of France ! This tacking 
plan of carrying bills through the House of Commons induced the 
Upper House to pass a standing order, to the effect, that "the 
annexing any clause to a money bill was contrary to the constitution 
of the English government and the usage of Parliament." 

The Lords, in their negotiations with the managers for the 
Commons, were most strenuous for carrying a numerous string of 
amendments or curtailments of the measure, for lightening the blow 
about to be dealt upon the dissenters, under the form of law ; but 
all in vain ; the bill must be carried, and the bill should be carried by 
the stockjobbing tackers of the Commons; headed by Mr. Bromley, 
Mr. St. John, Sir Simon Harcourt, the solicitor-general, and sup- 
ported by all the men who had bought their seats and wished to sell 
them at a profit, or bring about the old French times, when Louis' 
money should again circulate in the House of Commons, from the 
pocket of the French ambassador. These men, from Jack Howe 
upwards, could have no personal feelings against the dissenters. 
None ! Theirs was altogether a money calculation — a rise or fall 
of stock, East Indian or South Sea; and a brush with France or 
Holland or Spain, or a panic on the Pretender's landing in Devon- 
shire or anywhere else, was all the same to them, however disastrous 
it might be to the government or nation; for they were stockjob- 
bing speculators ; and bears or bulls, which you like, only name the 
stock : sell or buy, in any stock and to any amount, either for this 
day or any other you may be pleased to name. Such was the ma- 
jority of the House of Commons for the first three years of the reign 
of Queen Anne. Yes ! and this villainy in the Commons had, as its 
resisting barrier — fourteen bishops, at the head of whom stood the 
Archbishop of Canterbury ; and the lay peers were headed by the 
Duke of Devonshire in the House of Lords. 

The managers of the Commons enforced the necessity of the 



LIFE OF DE EOE. 169 

measure as a support of a national church, on account of " so many 
ill men pretending to inspiration, and so many weak men following 
them ;" and also, because the last reign began with an act in favour 
of dissenters, it was but fair that this should commence by an act 
in favour of the church. Such was the argument of the managers 
for the Commons ; while the managers for the Lords — the Duke of 
Devonshire, the Earl of Peterborough, the Bishop of Salisbury, Lord 
Somers, and Lord Halifax — maintained "that it was untrue to say of 
the dissenters, that they never wanted the will, when they had the 
power to destroy the church and state; since in the last and greatest 
danger (1688) it was exposed to, they joined with her, with all 
imaginable zeal and sincerity, against the Papists, their common 
enemy, showing no prejudice to the church ; but the utmost respect 
to her bishops when sent to the Tower. And that ever since they 
have continued to show all the signs of friendship and submission to 
the government of church and state ; that, in truth, formerly the 
dissenters had been seditious, and in arms and opposition to the state 
and church ; but it was the effect of persecution ; and even then they 
were open and avowed enemies ; but that toleration and tenderness 
had never missed of procuring peace and union, as persecution had 
never failed of the contrary effects." 

The Lords also intimated that the woollen manufacture, imported 
in a great measure with persecuted Flemish Protestants from the 
Spanish Netherlands in the reign of Elizabeth, could not flourish in 
this country in matters of religion, for u the book that goes under 
the name of Mr. De Wits, shows the Dutch reckon that the woollen 
manufactures can never have such a settlement among us as with 
them ; because they who must work them, cannot have so entire a 
liberty of conscience here as there. We have felt the happy effects 
of the liberty granted them in the last reign ; and it is to be hoped 
that nothing will be done in this to impeach that, or to raise appre- 
hensions and fears in the minds of men that are so useful to us in the 
most important article of our trade." The connection between the 
woollen cloth trade and religious liberty is worthy of consideration. 
Dorsetshire and the West of England were the great strongholds 
of dissent when the Duke of Monmouth and the Prince of Orange 



170 LIFE OP DE FOE. 

landed there in 1685 and 1688; while at this time (1859), the 
clothing districts of the West Riding of Yorkshire will be found to 
be the grand strongholds of religious liberty, and civil liberty too ; 
if the main points of the argument were only laid in truth and 
faithfulness before the common-sense comprehension of the people. 
Look at the Saddleworth freeholders in 1807 ; look there ! a Mister 
Somebody (Armitage or Armstrong) told a Saddleworth freeholder 
that he would never buy another piece of cloth of him if he did 
not vote for his candidate ! Fatal declaration ! — that silly threat, 
made to one or two men, turned the election for Yorkshire — and 
against Mister Armstrong's candidate. 

One would like to ask whether the taste for music came from 
Holland with the civil and religious liberty involved in the woollen 
trade? I should think it did. 

But to return to the bill, and its advocates in the Commons. Sir 
John Packinton observed — " One would be provoked, by the late 
behaviour of the bishops, to move for leave to bring in a bill for the 
toleration of episcopacy ; for, since they are of the same principles 
with the dissenters, it is but just, I think, that they should stand 
on the same foot." 

The above bill for persecuting the dissenters passed the House 
of Commons three times in the years 1702, 1703, and 1704; and 
was as often thrown out in the Lords ; the last time by a majority 
of 71— the Queen being present, and taking great interest in the 
measure against the dissenters. 

Queen Anne ! How could that woman forget that awful night 
when she stole from Whitehall, to place herself under General 
Compton — the Bishop of London dressed up in regimentals ; and 
had to flee under his escort to Nottingham, the headquarters of the 
Duke of Devonshire ! Queen Anne ! — a perjured woman ! — who 
held her right to the throne through the compact entered into 
between William Prince of Orange and the freeholders of England, 
in the Bill of Rights — that Magna Charter which alone gave Queen 
Anne any right to sit upon the throne of these realms. 

What business had that woman to dictate to the people of Eng- 
land how they should worship the God of their fathers ? Who made 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



171 



her a judge in such matters ? Look at her title to the throne — 
what was it — what was the solemn compact ? Was it right heredi- 
tary — right to work her people as tools, goods, and chattels ? No, 
she had no hereditary right to the throne ; her right was based upon 
successful revolution — the revolution of 1688. Her title, her char- 
ter, was the Bill of Rights. What was the Bill of Eights ? Was 
it a right to deprive half of her subjects of their privileges as citi- 
zens ? No ! her claim was an usurped claim ; and had it not been 
for the Lords and the Bishops, the creation of William III. for her 
as trustees, she must have gone once again by night, under General 
Compton — but not to Nottingham ; no ! but to Dover — for St. 
Germains, the house of her brother and her father. 

It is true that the whole race of Stuarts, from slobbering James 
downwards, had a wonderful notion of their rights as kings of 
England ; the whole race of them possessed this feeling ; and per- 
haps we may be excused if we inquire into the nature of the title, 
whether it were by conquest or by compact, bond, or charter? We 
will look into the conquest side of the argument, and admit its 
validity as a starting-point, and see by what unbroken chain of em- 
blazoned pedigree, Queen Anne possessed her throne ? Henry VII. 
was the conqueror upon whom James I, relied, and on this claim his 
son Charles staked his head, and lost ! Where is conquest title after 
that execution, for signing a bond with his people and breaking it ? 
Where stood right of conquest on that awful scaffold erected before 
one of the windows of Whitehall ? OomwelPs reign, Cromwell's 
glorious reign ! for he, Oliver Cromwell, had as great a right, by 
succession, to his place upon the throne, by right hereditary, as any 
king or any queen of England from the time of Edward the Con- 
fessor to this present moment. It may suit the sycophants to omit 
the statue of Cromwell in the New Palace of Westminster ; — but 
yet — yet, in spite of the Clarks, the Jubs, the Snubs, and the Smiths, 
of my Lord Chamberlain's dancing-list ; — yet, in spite of the pout- 
ing lip of disappointed sycophancy — Oliver Cromwell was, in fact, a 
king of England ; and a great one too ! Well, then, take his suc- 
cessor of conquest, Charles II., the pensioner of France — the man 
who sold Dunkirk to the French for £400,000, and spent the money 



172 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

with the French prostitute, the Duchess of Portsmouth ; what British 
conquest is there here ? 

Well, then, take James II., and he a prisoner in the hands of 
boatmen and rabble, at a public-house in Rochester ; taken prisoner 
when attempting to run away from his throne and people, in the 
disguise of a sailor ; — well, take the running away in the dead of the 
night, by the Princess of Denmark, under the protection of the 
Bishop of London, and he disguised as a soldier ; — where was the 
conquest here ? Well, then, William III. invading England at the 
head of fourteen thousand Dutchmen, and holding the throne, in his 
own name, by act of Parliament, or compact with the people, for 
fourteen years ; — where could Queen Anne's rights by conquest be, 
here? Her right to the throne, by any conquest of Henry VII., 
could not be, to Queen Anne, worth one of her farthings. 

We will now consider Queen Anne's title by hereditary descent. 
James, her great-grandfather, derived his title to the throne of Eng- 
land from Henry VII. : a bad title; perhaps the worst since the 
time of the Confessor, and his heir the Norman bastard ; excepting, 
perhaps, that of Edward III., the progenitor of Henry VII., seven 
reigns back in the table of genealogy; and he, too, king by the 
deposing of his father, and taking upon himself, in his father's life- 
time, the government of this realm of England, by a solemn compact, 
entered into with the people of England : his title to the throne 
being an act-of-Parliament title only. As to hereditary succession, 
from Henry VII., by way of Edward III., the title hereditary would 
be so thoroughly rotten, as not to be worth, both together, in the 
estimation of any county- court jury in England — a cartload of 
coals ! 

We will first take Edward the Confessor, whose title to the throne 
of England by hereditary right was bad — bad in itself — yes, builders 
and commissioners of your New Palace of Westminster, as bad a 
title to the throne by hereditary right as that of Oliver Cromwell, 
King of England by election ; and of blessed memory too ; whose 
statue you dare not place in your new building — a fact when the 
British constitution is on its trial — its last trial — and when British 
interests are drifting to German contralization, which speaks volumes 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 173 

for the cowardice of British legislators in the reign of Victoria. 
A great debt of gratitude is due from this nation to a man — the 
Brewer of Huntingdon ! — who proved the best of kings in the worst 
of times, to a people debased and crushed to the earth by the French 
influences. Let this debt be paid — let £100,000 be raised by 
national subscription for a national monument ; and let the electors 
of Westminster and Marylebone open the subscription lists ; and 
put my name down for £500 ; and, if you like, for I care not, let 
Hyde Park — the middle or highest point — be the situation for pitch- 
ing this testimony of a nation's gratitude to one of her kings, and 
one of her best of kings too ; and for motto add, if you like, " No 
German centralization here" 

Well, the illegitimate sovereign, Edward the Confessor, left the 
kingdom, by will, to the bastard William the Conqueror ; a per- 
jured man as well as a bastard. William II. was not the legitimate 
heir of William the Conqueror. No; Henry I., his brother, was a 
younger brother, made King, while his elder brother was living. 
Stephen, his successor, was placed in worse circumstances, for divine 
right. Henry II. was no better, as a divine-right king; for he was 
not the legitimate heir to Stephen, or anybody else. Richard I. 
succeeded his father. John succeeded Richard illegally, in the 
lifetime of the true heir. Henry III. succeeded John illegally. So 
that, of seven successors after the Conqueror, but one, Richard I., 
succeeded as heir to his father, or the Conqueror. We have heard 
of the poor Scotch Highlander boasting of an existence in pedigree 
before twa flood ; and we have heard of Noah descending from the 
deck of his ark, with the pedigree of Sir Watkins Williams Wynn, 
of Wynnstay, in Wales, under his arm, as a treasure. Sir Watkins 
Williams Wynnes pedigree — the pet volume in Noah's library! 
Yes ; his Whole Duty of Man ; with Family Exercises on Passive 
Obedience to the Family of Wynnstay, added by way of Appendix ! 
Is this absurd to the English reader? Is it more absurd than 
James Stuart setting up for King of England, as God's vicegerent, 
through the rotten title as King, of Henry VII. ? Talk of divine 
right of James I. ! — slobbering James — yes; slobbering James ! — 
whose great tongue, too large for his mouth, affected, or let down 



174 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

by a stroke of paralysis, was never in an easy position, except when 
licking some lad's face — either Carr's, or Villiers's, or some other 
lad's! Jure-divino from Scotland! what De Foe terms packs and scrat 
from beyond Tweed ! When Edward III. came in — a man who was 
a king, and ruled his people as a king, for a long and glorious reign 
— where was passive obedience, and divine right of kings? This 
man was crowned ; and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Walter, 
preached his coronation sermon ; and what was his text — what ? — 
Vox Populi, Vox Dei : — The Voice of the People is the Voice 
of God. Such was the jure-divino election to the throne of 
England of Edward III., our glorious King ! 

Edward III. was a good king of England, a very good one, and 
so was Henry VII. ; but yet, as hereditary drivers of dissenting 
slaves from this conventicle to that church, at the beck or call of 
this or that bishop, their titles were worthless ; as the execution of 
Charles I. fully testified, when he staked his throne and his head upon 
the venture. Charles I. broke his bond, solemnly entered into with 
his people; and that act of perjury cost him his life, for he was 
tried, found guilty, and executed. 

But it may be said that a corrupt, rotten House of Commons 
were to blame in allowing the executive to act the tyrant with the 
people. This is quite true : a corrupt House of Commons, bribed 
and corrupted by the French ambassador, with the money of Louis 
the Fourteenth and the pensioned — French -pensioned — profligate, 
Charles II., heart-broke William III. and Queen Anne. This is a 
fact. But can no remedy be found ? Yes ! Annual Parliaments ; 
and without the ballot, if you please ; for the ballot-box can be forged 
by a powerful and dishonest executive, especially in boroughs snugly 
placed by circumstances for playing the game. Parliaments in Eng- 
land were annual, till the governing powers, for their own purposes, 
chose to make them otherwise ; at one time they must be made tri- 
ennial, to fix the Whigs, or serve some dark or party purpose; and 
at another time they must be made septennial, to fix or annoy the 
Tories ! All this would be fully rectified by Annual Parliaments 
and widely extended electoral districts, with bribery and intimidation 
by treating or persecution rendered felony; and the briber or 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 175 

intimidator subjected to transportation to a penal settlement, on 
a verdict of guilty being pronounced by a British jury at the county 
assizes. This would be ballot-box enough ; and no juggling with 
,false bottoms or false tops, or double and false keys, with false 
officials in the pay of the executive, prepared to make a false return 
by the ballot-box, placed in their hands as national umpires; 
provided it could be done with the certainty of their never being 
detected and punished, 

I would say avoid the ballot, but insist upon the duration of Par- 
liaments being annual only, and bribery and corruption, felony, 
on conviction before a British assize jury. Oh ! but you '11 — 
you '11, indeed ! I would transport every man to a penal settlement 
for life, on a conviction of bribery or intimidation. I would want 
no ballot-box ; mine should emphatically be — the jury-box ; and if 
necessary in the course of justice, I would place every member of 
the government in the witness-box. Half-a-dozen convictions for 
bribery, with as many transportations for life, twenty, or seven 
years, would soon clean or clear the way to the poll-booth; and 
bribery and intimidation become unknown in Britain. 

In another part of this book I have proposed, as a punishment for 
bribery or intimidation for men high in place in this world's smiles, 
stripping in Palace Yard, Westminster, and tying to a cart-tail and 
flogging down the Strand to Temple Bar. This is better protection 
to the voter than the ballot-box ; the ballot-box you might forge, 
but there would be no forging under the lash of two drummers 
from the Foot Guards. There is a way of protection to the voter ; 
and that way must adopted ; and without the ballot, too. 

Well ! but in all this state of turmoil and contention on the Pres- 
byterians turning churchmen once a year for corporation honours, 
how did De Foe act ? He wrote to the Rev. Mr. Howe for advice, 
and got an answer, as we have seen before; and he wrote his 
book, the Shortest Way with the Dissenters, too, and got into gaol 
for twelve months for doing it ; he wrote against these men playing 
dissenter to foster the pride of intelligence and credit of ' ( thinking 
for one's-self," and then turning churchman too, in order to be a 



176 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

great man on lord mayor's day, and play at long-spoon and custard 
with City aldermen at the gate of Newgate. De Foe's advice was 
to hang and drown the whole Presbyterian fry; for a threat of 
drowning to a man changing his religion in order to be Lord Mayor 
of London, would quicken his steps in the changing march, rather 
than be hanged or drowned for his religion. 

The Presbyterians in De Foe's time (1702) were an elevating 
class; and he thought very little of them as a religious body of 
independent, self-relying, vigorous, healthy Christians. I fancy he 
thought these men very genteel, but half Tories — a class of men 
who, to be lord mayor of London, would not scruple to play at 
bo-peep with God Almighty on religious matters. Poor De Foe ! 
he was too honest for the party. De Foe was himself a Presby- 
terian, as we shall find elsewhere in this book ; but of this occasional 
"conformity to the church for lord mayor's show and City honours, 
he, as a dissenter, highly disapproved. He, as a dissenter, would 
say, " Do your worst at us, and take the consequences ; you have 
done it before twice, and what was the consequence?" To the two, 
Charles and James, father and son, he pointed mentally — u Look 
there, at the scaffold at Whitehall ; and there — there — the alehouse 
prisoner at Rochester ; the two martyrs, wet and dry. 

De Foe had no fear at a trial of strength on religious matters — 
the contest had been tried, and the battle had been won — won twice 
— in death and in banishment, to two Kings of England ! For 
what? — what? — For trampling on the rights of the people, and 
breaking their bond with that people ; — on the people's rights, and 
on the people's liberties — for they have both, and will continue to 
have; till a German centralization on Education shall prostrate every 
man's neck in Britain below the foot of a parson. Education is the 
weapon to be used for re-erecting the Star Chamber and the Court 
of High Commission, and subdue us all — all — old and young, rich 
and poor, to one level ; and that to be fixed by the minister of the 
crown for court purposes. 

Oxford examinations of the working classes, what are they — where 
do they lead? Privy Council turned schoolmaster, where does that 



LIFE OP DE FOE. 177 

lead — where does it point : — to the high road of arbitrary power, 
and a subjugation of a free people to all the tyranny of a govern- 
mental bondage. 

At this time (1702) De Foe brought out his pamphlet entitled 
the Shortest Way with the Dissenters, or Proposals for the Esta- 
blishment of the Church. This pamphlet was framed on the model 
of Sacheverell, Leslie, and others ; and was, no doubt, written to 
precipitate the catastrophe which at that time was threatening both 
the throne and the church. De Foe knew the power in wealth, and 
the numbers of the dissenters ; and the effect which an open rupture 
with such a party in the kingdom would have upon the government 
and the war with France ; only reluctantly carried on by the Tories, 
then in power. De Foe had written so freely to and on the Rev. 
Mr. John Howe, and his members receiving the sacrament as a 
passport to civil honour, that he had completely closed all acquaint- 
ance with them ; and, if he could have urged on the government to 
irritate this respectable Presbyterian congregation into open hosti- 
lity, he would have materially strengthened the dissenting party by 
so doing. The leading dissenters of the lord-mayor class would 
blame De Foe quite as much as the High- Church party could blame 
him ; for the latter quite approved of his book, till they knew that 
it was written by him, to ridicule them. 

The government and the High-Church party were anxious to crush 
the dissenters ; but this exterminating process by fire and sword 
frightened the government ; for the government was in great danger 
from rousing up the sleeping powers of the dissenters into actual 
resistance. This would have brought on a contest which Queen 
Anne's government was by no means prepared to enter upon ; for 
in such a contest the Queen would have been worsted, and what 
would have been the result ? A packing-up of traps for St. Germains; 
the last of the Stuarts gone ! It was all very well for De Foe to 
call this pamphlet a joke, or piece of irony ; but it was no joke for 
the government. De Foe states, that when he wrote his pamphlet, 
et Down with the Whigs, down with the Presbyterians, down with 
the meeting-houses !" was such an universal cry, that nothing else 
was to be heard in the mouths of these furies for a long time. Press, 

12 



178 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

pulpit, coffee-house — all the discourse of the kingdom was, what her 
Majesty would do ; and then the church should triumph over her 
enemies the dissenters \ how forty-one should now be fully revenged; 
and all things were to be done the shortest way. Though this truth 
was unhappily told by the author of this a little too soon, yet 
time has made it plain it was in their design, and discovered by 
themselves. 

There was nothing in De Foe's pamphlet but what had been 
enunciated again and again from scores of pulpits, both in London 
and in Oxford and Cambridge ; but yet the thing was done in such 
a way as to make a national agitation, and threaten the disturbance 
of the government j and this was so palpable, that the Secretary of 
State for the Home Department spared no pains till he had discovered 
the author, and found that author to be the most obnoxious man 
in the kingdom — fearless, and dangerous from his talents ; and that 
man was Daniel De Foe. The Earl of Nottingham was secretary of 
state at this time ; and he was the man who made out De Foe to 
be the writer of this dangerous pamphlet ; and on the discovery, 
great was the dismay of the High-Church divines, who had applauded 
this divine production, even in their pulpits, as a work which stood 
next to the holy scriptures in importance. 

The whole party now called for vengence on the head of the author 
— hanging was too good for such a miscreant ! In the excitement, 
more than one individual offered to officiate as hangman, rather than 
this blasphemous author should go unpunished. In this state of 
threatened vengence, De Foe ran away, and was advertised in the 
London Gazette, and £50 offered for his apprehension. This took 
place on the 10th day of January, 1703; and the advertisement 
is as follows : — 

" Whereas Daniel De Foe, alias De Fooe, is charged with writing 
a scandalous and seditious pamphlet entitled the Shortest Way with 
the Dissenters. He is a middle-sized spare man, about forty years 
old, of a brown complexion, and dark brown coloured hair, but wears 
a wig ; a hooked nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole 
near his mouth ; was born in London, and for many years was a 
hose-factor in Freeman's Yard, in Cornhill; and now is owner of 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 179 

the brick and pantile works near Tilbury Fort, in Essex. Whoever 
will discover the said Daniel De Foe to one of her Majesty's principal 
secretaries of state, or any of her Majesty's justices of the peace, so 
he may be apprehended, shall have the reward of fifty pounds, 
which her Majesty has ordered immediately to be paid upon such 
discovery." 

At the same time a formal complaint was made of this publication 
in the House of Commons, on Feb. 25, 1703; when, some of the 
obnoxious passages being read, it was resolved — " That this book, 
being full of false and scandalous reflections on this Parliament, and 
tending to promote sedition, be burnt by the hands of the common 
hangman to-morrow, in New Palace Yard." 

At the Old Bailey sessions, held on Feb. 24, 1703, Sir Simon 
Harcourt being the solicitor-general at the time, and conducting the 
prosecution for the government, the grand jury construed his of- 
fence for a libel ; and the trial came off on the following July : the 
interim being occupied by agents of the government tampering with 
the prisoner, to induce him to plead guilty under a promise of a royal 
pardon. This would have been a most important relief for Lord 
Nottingham, a narrow, bigoted High- Church Tory, placed upon the 
brink of a precipice, with Harley, the popular Speaker and boon 
companion of the House of Commons, ready at a moment's notice to 
supplant him; which he did, within a few months of this ever- 
memorable trial. 

When the trial came on, De Foe, under the promise of pardon 
from the Earl of Nottingham, her Majesty's secretary of state, pleaded 
guilty ; and, to the astonishment of every one, the sentence of the 
court upon him was, that he pay 200 marks to the Queen ; stand 
three times in the pillory; be imprisoned during the Queen's plea- 
sure ; and find sureties for his good behaviour for seven years. Such 
was the sentence; and such was it carried out; to the eternal disgrace 
of Daniel Finch, Earl of Nottingham, the Queen's secretary of state 
at the time. 

The pillory exhibition is thus noticed in the London Gazette of 
July 31 :— 

" On the 29th instant, Daniel Foe, alias De Foe, stood in the pillory 

12* 



180 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

before the Royal Exchange in Cornhill, as he did yesterday near the 
Conduit in Cheapside, and this day at Temple Bar; in pursuance of 
his sentence given against him at the last sessions at the Old Bailey, 
for writing and publishing a seditious libel, entitled the Shortest 
Way with the Dissenters. By which sentence he is also fined 200 
marks, to find sureties for his good behaviour for seven years ; and 
to remain in prison till all be performed." 

Such a pillory exhibition had seldom been seen in England ; for 
exulting thousands accompanied De Foe from Newgate to the pillory 
on each day, to protect him from hurt or insult ; and accompanied 
him also with shouts of triumph on his return to Newgate. The 
very pillory itself was said to have been decorated with garlands ; 
for it was the height of summer, when there were abundance of 
flowers ; and not only this, but refreshments were provided for him ; 
and, as an opponent said of the crowd at the time and their 
refreshments, — 

The shouting crowds their advocate proclaim, 
And varnish over infamy with fame. 
As round him Philistines adoring stand, 
And keep their Dagon safe from Israel's hand ; 
That, dirt themselves, protected him from filth, 
And with the faction's money drank his health. 

On De Foe being again lodged in the felons' room in Newgate, 
he set to work to commemorate the event by writing a Hymn to the 
Pillory : — 

Hail ! hieroglyphick state machine, 

Contriv'd to punish fancy in ; 

Men that are men, in thee can feel no pain, 

And all thy insignificants disdain. 

Contempt, that false new word for shame, 

Is, without crime, an empty name : 

A shadow to amuse mankind, 

But never frights the wise or well-fixed mind. 

Virtue despises human scorn, 

And scandals innocence adorn. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



181 



How have thy opening vacancies receiv'd, 

In every stage, the criminals of state ! 
And how has mankind been deceiv'd, 

When they distinguish crimes by fate ! 
Tell us, great engine^ how to understand, 
Or reconcile the justice of the land ; 
How Bastwick, Prynne, Hunt, Hollingsby, and Pye, 
Men of unspotted honesty, 
Men that had learning, wit, and sense ; 
And more than most men have had since, 
Could equal title to thee claim 
With Oats and Fuller, men of later fame ; 
Even the learned Selden saw 
A prospect of thee, through the law ; 
He had thy lofty pinnacles in view, 
But so much honour never was thy due. 
Had the great Selden triumphed on thy stage — 
Selden, the honour of this age, 
No man would ever shun thee more, 
Or grudge to stand where Selden stood before. 

Perhaps we might be allowed to ask, why De Foe, a thorough dis- 
senter of the old Puritan school, should write a mad fire-and-faggot 
tract against the whole body of dissenters ? De Foe's principles were 
not the ordinary sunshine principles of prosperous mace or sword 
bearing dissent; but were of the true old persecuted Puritan class — 
a class doomed to conquest or death in the combat. Can we wonder 
at such a man being highly offended at the Rev. Mr. Howe defend- 
ing such time-serving dissenters as Sir Humphrey Edwin and Sir 
Thomas Abney, both lord mayors, and both using the sacrament of 
the Lord's Supper as a qualification for office ? to whom he refers 
when he writes — "'Tis vain to trifle in this matter. The light, 
foolish handling of them by fines is their glory and advantage. If 
the gallows instead of the Compter, and the gallies instead of the 
fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle, there would not be 
so many sufferers. The spirit of martyrdom is over. They that 
will go to church to be chosen sheriffs and mayors, would go to forty 
churches rather than be hanged. If one severe law was made and 



182 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

punctually executed, that whoever was found at a conventicle should 
be banished the nation, and the preacher be hanged, we should soon 
see an end of the tale ; they would all come to church j and one age 
would make us all one again. To talk of 5s. a month for not coming 
to the sacrament, and Is. a week for not coming to church, is such 
a way of converting people as never was known. This is selling 
them a liberty to transgress, for so much money. If it be not a 
crime, why don't we give them full license ? And if it be, no price 
ought to compound for the committing it; for that is selling a 
liberty to the people to sin against God and the government. We 
hang men for trifles, and banish them for things not worth naming; 
but an offence against God and the church, against the welfare of 
the world and the dignity of religion, shall be bought off for 5s. 
This is such a shame to a Christian government, that 'tis with regret 
I transmit it to posterity." 

De Foe complained, aud with justice too, of these time-serving 
dissenters, who allowed him to fight this battle of civil and religious 
liberty — for such was the contest — and receive the enemy's charge 
single-handed. De Foe's tract has always been held up for a very 
witty performance ; it might be witty, but I cannot see the wit of 
it, and I never could see the wit of it ; but I can conceive a man of De 
Foe's power of discrimination perceiving the exact position of parties 
in England ; and calculating the effect of a pushing the High- 
Church principles to their extreme length ; he could at once per- 
ceive that the Earl of Nottingham's administration must go at 
once ; and he might also calculate upon rousing the whole dissenting 
power, and producing a money crisis ; for the dissenters were the 
moneyed interest of the kingdom at this time. A crisis at this 
time would have seriously interfered with the French war; and 
this, with the removal of the Earl of Nottingham from the ministry, 
would have been objects which De Foe would have gone great 
lengths to accomplish ; for he heartily disliked both the one and 
the other. Besides all this, Harley, though a supporter of the 
Revolution, was neglected by William, and had in consequence 
commenced business, as a politician independent of royalty, by 
making friends for himself, by his hospitality and convivial deport- 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 183 

ment amongst the members of the House of Commons. He had 
done this so effectually as to be chosen Speaker in three successive 
Parliaments. He was talented, intriguing, proud, disappointed, and 
ambitious ; and only waited for one single false step of the haughty, 
priest-ridden, mistrusted Earl of Nottingham, to take his place. 
De Foe's tract just named was to effect this ; and place Harley 
as secretary of state in the place of him. De Foe was acting 
with and for Harley, and probably was paid by Harley for writing 
this tract ; for Harley supplied him with money when in confine- 
ment in Newgate for this prosecution; and it has been affirmed on 
good authority, that the Queen sent money to De Foe's wife and 
family at the instigation of Harley. Harley was not in the ministry, 
but yet he had actually more of the personal confidence of the Queen, 
through back-stairs intriguing, than her own ministers possessed. 
What was the point to be attained by the Queen through Harley's 
assistance, I cannot affirm ; but probably it had something to do 
with serving the interest of the family at St. Grermains, at the 
expense of the interests of the house of Hanover. Queen Anne's 
position, through the greater part of her reign, was a very anomalous 
one; she was in the hands of High- Church Tories, her friends and 
the friends of the Stuarts ; she waged war with France against the 
Pretender and these friends, forced into it by the ¥/higs ; and yet 
she was intriguing with Harley, St. John, and others, for the Pre- 
tender ; High-Church bigots were her ministers and her House of 
Commons; while William Cavendish, the first Duke of Devonshire, 
the handsomest man in the kingdom, and most liberal man too, in tho- 
rough Protestant principles of the Revolution class, was lord steward 
of the household ; and his son, William Cavendish, Marquis of Har- 
tington, a bold, unflinching assertor of the liberty of the people in the 
House of Commons, was c?otain of the Yeomen of the Guard. The 
Duke of Marlborough too, one of the greatest men of his day as a 
clear-headed statesman, was captain-general; and his duchess was lady 
of the bedchamber to the Queen when she was Princess of Denmark, 
for some years ; and on the Queen's accession to the throne, was 
created groom of the stole, and keeper of the privy purse. Now, 
I believe that to the Duchess of Marlborough a national debt of 



184 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

gratitude is due for the manner in which she exercised her influence 
over Queen Anne during the greater portion of her reign ; and when 
she ceased to have that influence, it was when Harley perceived the 
church was falling, and the Duchess of Marlborough could not per- 
ceive it. She paid the penalty of her blindness — for the church was 
in danger — and retired from court, to make way for Mrs. Masham, 
the creature and relative of Harley and St. John, and perhaps the 
Pretender. The High-Church Tories removed all liberals from the 
Queen as well, or as fast, as they could ; yet there was some power 
behind the throne which saved the Queen from speedy destruction, 
by keeping some of the first men in Europe about her person, either 
as ministers or friends ; and that power, with reverence I write it, 
was Sarah Duchess of Marlborough — one of the greatest stateswomen 
that England has ever known. She saved Queen Anne by her advice ; 
and is, therefore, entitled to our gratitude. I believe history has 
wronged this woman, and robbed her of our gratitude. She was a 
great woman, and saved England from revolution in the reign of 
Anne; a weak, bigoted woman, who had but one idea ; and that was 
— that the church was falling. 

And this Sarah Duchess of Marlborough was an adviser and con- 
stant companion of the Queen for years ; and with her the Earl of 
Sunderland, her son-in-law, a man of sense ; and Charles Duke of 
Somerset, who was master of the horse, and was of the same choice 
class of clear-headed statesmen. This was a band of men collected 
about the throne by William III., and left as a legacy of advisers 
to his successor. The Tory rabbledom of the House of Commons 
displaced as many of William's statesmen as they could ; but these, 
by some power or other (that referred to above), maintained their 
places about the Queen, and perhaps were the means of keeping her 
on the throne ; for if she had succeeded her father, James II., with- 
out the intervention of William and these picked men; and had 
William's judgment in the choice selection of bishops in the House 
of Lords been wanting; the Queen would have been left at the mercy 
of High-Church and French-interested advisers, with Jack Howe, 
and others of his stamp, to carry on the government in the House 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 185 

of Commons ; when there would have been a third Stuart revolution, 
by the Queen running away in disgrace, and placing herself under 
the protection of France; as another Stuart pensioner of that throne. 
This I have affirmed before : I repeat it here. 

We will now return to Newgate, where De Foe was confined, on 
Nov. 27, 1703; when there arose the greatest storm of wind ever 
known in England, on which he wrote a poem, from which I will 
give an extract or two : — 

Think it not strange, I heard it here ; 

No place is so remote but when lie speaks they hear. 

Besides, though I am dead to fame, 

I never told you where I am. 

Though I have lost poetic breath, 

I 'm not in perfect state of death ; 

From whence this Popish consequence I draw, 

I 'm in the limbus of the law. 

Let me be where I will, I heard the storm, 

From every blast it echoed thus — Refokm ! 

Rise, Satire, from thy sleep of legal death, 

And reassume satyric breath ; 

What though to seven years' sleep thou art confin'd, 

Thou well may'st wake with such a wind. 

They say this was a High-Church storm, 

Sent out the nation to reform ; 

But th' emblem left the moral in the lurch, 

For 't blew the steeple down upon the church ; 

From whence we now inform the people, 

The danger of the church is from the steeple ; 

And we 've had many a bitter stroke 

From pinnacle and weathercock, 

From whence the learned do relate, 

That to secure the church and state, 

The time will come when all the town, 

To save the church, will pull the steeple down. 



186 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

This church-in- danger prosecution and pillory exhibition, with 
Newgate confinement for several months, made sad havoc with poor 
De Foe's mercantile pursuits j especially the pantile business at Til- 
bury Fort. Pantiles, to be good, should be composed of flint, and 
clay or alumen ; but for the warp of the Thames, from London street 
deposits of vegetable and animal matter, to be expected to stand the 
fire, is absurd. De Foe failed, and he blamed the government pro- 
secution for breaking him. 

De Foe has stated that he lost £3500 by this confinement, and 
had to give up his coach too, and dismiss his servants, and go into 
a smaller house. I am sure Tilbury Fort clay would not stand the 
fire equal to the pantiles which the Dutch could import for the 
London market. The speculation was an absurd one, and it failed, 
as all De Foe's projects failed, through his own imprudence, extra- 
vagance, and folly. I believe him to have been a thoughtless, vain 
man, who did not confine his wants to his circumstances — but 
started in life, as thousands do, according to his ideas of respect- 
ability ; and not according to the amount of his income. 

About the time of De Foe's imprisonment (July 11, 1703), a 
curious incident occurred in connection with William Colepeper, 
Esq., a Kentish gentleman, well known as one of the five renowned 
Kentish petitioners of the last reign, and legal adviser of Daniel 
De Foe, when tried for writing his celebrated tract, the Shortest 
Way with the Dissenters. It was on this man's advice that De Foe 
pleaded guilty to the indictment, under a promise of pardon from 
the Earl of Nottingham, the secretary of state ; which promise was 
broken by the said earl ; and De Foe was condemned, in fact, to be 
confined in prison during the Queen's pleasure ; which might have 
been for life, had the Finch family been at the head of state affairs, 
and longer lived than their prisoner. 

Her Majesty being at Windsor at this time, Mr. Colepeper repaired 
thither to present his petition to the Privy Council, then assembled, 
on account of that extraordinary genius, beyond which " the world 
has not in any age produced a man beyond Mr. De Foe, for his 
miraculous fancy and lively invention in all his writings, both in 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 187 

verse and prose ;" and it was added by Mr. Colepeper as a reason or 
justification for his interest taken in the liberation of the prisoner, 
then confined in Newgate during the Queen's pleasure, "and to 
justify his value for Mr. De Foe, that in an age when the heavenly 
muses have become syrens, and turned low panders to the senses, 
Mr. De Foe has given vice a stab, and writ up to the test of moral 
virtue." 

" For these reasons, William Colepeper freely engaged, on Mr. 
De Foe's behalf, in an undertaking which, as the case stood, he 
thought was equally just and charitable." 

Be it understood, that this William Colepeper had stood a contest 
for the county of Kent at the general election of 1702, and polled 
upon that occasion thirty gentlemen out of thirty-five, in his own 
division of the county ; and polled also 1625 freeholders, of whom 
1200 were single votes, or what we now term "plumpers"; a number 
never yet brought into the field, in that county, by one single gen- 
tleman against two united ; and these supporters were, for the most 
part, signers and abettors of the celebrated Kentish Petition of a 
former period. Well, Mr. Colepeper lost his election, through the 
canvassing against him of Sir George Rooke, Knight, lord high 
admiral of England, and his dependants : a class of men convenient 
for a coward — military or naval — to keep about him, by preferments 
and promises, for the protection of the imbecile person of a British 
sailor; who is too impotent or debased to protect himself; and also 
by the " unfair usages put upon him by the sheriff of the county, 
with relation to a hasty closing of the book, when all the candidates 
agreed only to adjourn to the next day, William Colepeper having 
then several hundreds of freeholders to come in." 

While Mr. Colepeper was waiting in the ante-room of the council- 
chamber, an express arrived from the navy, which caused some 
attention to the subject among the waiters there; when Mr. Cole- 
peper asked Colonel Seymour, standing or sitting near to him, 
whether the admiral was with the fleet (England being then at war 
with France and Spain) , or at Bath ? and Colonel Seymour replied, 
" He is at Bath, and has been there some time." — " Is he not well?" 



188 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

inquired William Colepeper.— " No," replied the colonel; "if he 
were, he would not be there ; he would be at the fleet." — " How do 
the waters agree with him ?" inquired William Colepeper. 

This conversation was repeated to the admiral and his dependants, 
waiters on Providence, skilled fencers ; captains and colonels about 
town, better known somewhere — perhaps the hazard- table — than 
on the battle-field, or by the number of the regiment ; for they 
were, one and all, the paid, promoted, cherished, hired bullies, or 
street assassins, to the number of twenty-two ; emphatically (so far 
as her Majesty's service went) unattached; but kept in the pay of 
Admiral Sir George Rooke, to fight his battles, and protect his re- 
putation by murder and assassination, as occasion might call forth, 
either in the streets of London by night or by day ; or in the county 
of Kent ; to which Sir George Rooke and these hired assassins, for 
the most part, belonged. This conversation on Bath waters was 
repeated to the disadvantage of William Colepeper, as though he had 
laid particular emphasis on Bath waters ; perhaps with some mental 
comparison with the waters of the Bay of Biscay, or Cadiz ; or as 
we might in our day, 1858, understand by Baltic waters or Black- 
Sea waters. Yes ! the lord high admiral of England taking the 
waters of Bath, while his fleet were taking the waters of the Bay of 
Balaclava or Cronstadt ! 

Things took such a turn, that William Colepeper, to save his life 
from assassination by the paid bullies of the lord high admiral of 
England, was compelled to bring to trial, before Lord Chief Justice 
Holt, for conspiracy, Mr. Nathaniel Denew, Mr. Robert Britton, 
and Mr. John Merriam, all men from Kent ; and men skilled in 
fencing and fighting other people's battles with the sword, either in 
town or country, at a moment's notice. 

The following is the record read at the trial : — 

" Mid.'ss. The jurors for our Sovereign Lady the Queen present, 
that Nathaniel Denew, late of the parish of St. Clement's Dane, in 
the county aforesaid, gent. ; John Merriam, late of that parish, in 
the said county, gent.; and Richard Britton, late of the same 
parish, in the same county, gent., being fighters, swordsmen, and 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 189 

disturbers of the peace, and skilled and verst in fighting duels ; on 
the 21st day of August, in the second year of the reign of our 
Sovereign Lady Anne, by the grace of God, of England, Scotland, 
France, and Ireland, Queen, Defender of the Faith, &c, did in the 
parish of Clement's Dane, in the said county of Middlesex, unlaw- 
fully, clandestinely, devilishly, wickedly, and maliciously, under 
pretence of discord, strife, and contention, between Sir George 
Rooke, Knt., one of her Majesty's honourable Privy Council, and 
William Colepeper, Esq., then and before mov'd, Lad, and being, 
consult, machinate, propose, and intend, and did among themselves, 
and others to the jurors unknown, confederate and conspire, and 
each of them did machinate, propose, and intend to beat, wound, and 
evilly treat the said William Colepeper ; and him, the said William 
Colepeper, either by duel or assassination, feloniously and mali- 
ciously to kill and murder ; and that afterwards, that is to say, on 
the 21st of August, in the year aforesaid, about the hour of ten in 
the afternoon of the same day, in the parish and county aforesaid ; 
the said William Colepeper being in the peace of God and the 
Queen ; came the said Nathaniel Denew with force and arms, and 
lying in wait of his malice forethought and assault premeditated, 
then and there offered himself to fight a mortal duel, in behalf (as he 
said) of the said Sir George Rooke against the said William Cole- 
peper ; and with threatening, spightful, and opprobrious words, then 
and there daringly, wickedly, maliciously, and vehemently urged, 
provoked, and stirred up the said William Colepeper to fight with 
him the said mortal duel ; and that afterwards, that is to say, on the 
22nd day of the said month of August, in the time aforesaid, about 
nine o'clock in the morning, in the parish aforesaid, the said William 
Colepeper being in the peace of God and the Queen, then came the 
said Richard Britton with force of arms, malice forethought, and 
assault premeditated, and then and there offered himself to fight a 
mortal duel (as he said) on behalf of the said Sir George Rooke ; and 
with threatening words, daringly, wickedly, maliciously, and vehe- 
mently urged, provoked, and stirred up the said William Colepeper 
to fight with him the said mortal duel ; and that the said Nathaniel 
Denew and John Merriam, on the same 22nd of August, in the year 



190 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

and in the parish aforesaid, with force and arms, with malice fore- 
thought, by lying in wait, and premeditated murder, assaulted him, 
the said William Colepeper; and with drawn swords, sharply, cruelly, 
and with all their strength, tried, and long contended, to wound, kill, 
and murder him ; and unless the said William had strenuously and 
with courage defended himself, and had been seasonably rescued by 
several of her Majesty's subjects, at that time interposing between 
them, they, the said Nathaniel Denew and John Merriam, had then 
and there feloniously, voluntarily, and maliciously killed and mur- 
dered him ; and that the said Nathaniel Denew, John Merriam, and 
Robert Britton, committed other enormities to the said William 
Colepeper, to the grievous damage of the said William Colepeper, 
the danger of bloodshed and murder, to the great scandal and in- 
famy of the said Sir George Rooke, being one of her Majesty's most 
honourable Privy Council aforesaid ; in contempt of the Queen and 
her laws, to the evil example of all others in the like case offending, 
and against the peace of the said Queen, her crown, and dignity." 

I am sorry I cannot give the whole trial, showing Sir George 
Rooke, lord high admiral of the British fleet, to have been a coward, 
and the hirer of assassins, even to the number of twenty, to fight his 
battles and support his Bath- water- drinking reputation. 

I will give an extract or two, as showing the pleasures of an acci- 
dental stroll in London streets in 1 703 : — 

" Mr. Colepeper examined. — The same Sunday morning, about 
two or three hours after I had been with Sir George Rooke : I had 
my eyes about me, as I thought it concerned me to have, and I often 
turned about to see who was coming ; I saw Mr. Denew running 
after me; seeing him run, I thought it not worthy of a man to 
run from him. I stood ; he comes up to me : says he, ' Well over- 
taken ; ' said I to him again, ' Your business, sir ? ' Says he, f I 
come to demand satisfaction of you;' said I, ' I have been with Sir 
George Rooke, and I have satisfied him.' ' Well, but ' says he, c you 
have not satisfied me ; and you are a scoundrel and a rascal ; and, if 
you will not draw, I '11 cane you.' I thought not fit to return his ill 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 191 

language again ; and in the next place, I would give no colour to the 
quarrel, being upon their own accounts. Said I, ' I see you are two 
to one/ because Mr. Merriam was there. l No/ said Mr. Denew, 
' you are three to two/ for I had this Mr. Cumin and Mr. Bentley, 
my friends, with me. ' No/ said I, ' I will engage no man in my 
quarrel, but I will go with you myself; ' so I went with him, and 
as we were going, said I, ' Mr. Denew, what quarrel have you with 
me? 1 Says he, ' You spread out your hands thus, and raised your 
voice/ Said I, ' Mr. Britton hath been with me, and told me thy 
own consultation ; but Sir George Booke will not thank you for this, 
for I have been with him/ Says he, ' I know Sir George Booke's 
mind/ Said I, e I have been with him this morning — have you seen 
him since V ' I know his mind better than you/ said he, ' and you 
must fight with me/ So I went along with him. When I came to 
the corner of Little Drury Lane, I observed him to have a very great 
cane in his hand ; said I, ' You have a great cane, which is an advan- 
tage, if you have skill to use it; you must lay down your cane/ 
Instead of laying it down, he up with it as fast as he could to strike 
me ; with that, I stepped back, and drew my sword, and he did the 
same; but he fumbled, having his cane in his hand, so that I believe 
my sword was out rather sooner than his. I walked back about 
the length of this court, and there I stood ; Mr. Denew came to 
me : though I know something of fencing, I had heard so much of 
Mr. Denew's skill, that I was not willing to venture my skill against 
his ; I held my sword close to my body, with the point up, and 
thrust without parrying, and drew it back again to myself. This 
was the way of my defence; and we had, in this manner, about 
seven or eight passes at each other; at last, seeing the advantage 
he had of me with his cane, I threw first my hat at him, which 
missed him; afterwards I threw my peruke, which hit upon his 
shoulder; I took that opportunity, and made a home pass at him. 
Says Mr. Denew, 'That is not fair/ and dropt his sword; 'that is 
not fair/ said he. t Fair/ said I, ' anything to an assassin : you are 
a villain, hired by Sir George Booke to assassinate me/ This, my 
lord, was what I said." 

Again. — " Counsel for the Queen. — What is this Denew ? 



192 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

" Mr. Colepeper. — I don't know that he is a gentleman ; I believe 
he is not. He has, by report, no very good fortune, and is said to 
have fought in other people's quarrels pretty frequently. 

"Counsel for the Queen. — Is he a soldier, or a fencing- master, or 
a gentleman ? What is he ? 

" Mr. Colepeper. — He is one that hath great skill in fencing, and 
I thought him called out for that reason." 

Again. — " Counsel for the Defendants. — I think you say you had 
a challenge from Sir George Rooke ; was it in writing, or by word of 
mouth ? 

" Mr. Colepeper. — By word of mouth j by Mr. Denew. 

" Counsel for the Defendants. — You say Mr. Denew overtook you 
by St. Clement's ; do you apprehend that they came thither to meet 
with you? 

" Mr. Colepeper. — I apprehended it wherever I went. I looked 
to be attacked in the street; and so I told Mr.Bentley, and desired 
him to be with me, and take notice I was upon the defensive, for 
there will be swords drawn. 

"Counsel for the Defendants. — You say you lodged inCecill Street; 
how could you think to meet them there ? Did you think they would 
lye in wait? 

"Mr. Colepeper. — Yes ; and that they were waiting for me every- 
where : when I arose in the morning, and looked from my lodgings, 
I saw some persons stand at the end of Cecill Street, and bobb and 
run; these I apprehended were setters." 

The Earl of Winchilsea, lord lieutenant of the county of Kent, 
came forward to speak for the prisoners, and seemed to fall in with 
old acquaintances; he considered Mr. Britton to be esteemed a 
gentleman of such esteem and worth in town and country, that he 
need say few words upon him. He was an old intimate acquaint- 
ance ; and Mr. Denew, too, was no fencing-master, no dueller, and 
no master of fence ; he was well known to him ; he held commis- 
sions both from Prince George of Denmark and also from the 
Queen; for he had two under the Prince. He was quite an 
honourable man; and of course well known in high quarters. 

The Earl of Winchilsea is quite at home with all these men : 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 193 

he not only knows them, but esteems them, as fellow-placeholders 
under Queen Anne's government; for one of these street bullies — 
one of these assassins — held two places under Prince George of Den- 
mark, and one under the Queen ! ! These men were government 
officials at the command of the Privy Council — at this hour for the 
secretary of state ; and at that, for the lord high admiral. At the 
command, I say, of the government, on that shortest possible notice 
required for calling a hackney-coach, by day or by night, in town 
or in country, and squeezing into that coach three, two, or four 
armed men, to murder, fight, lie, quirk, or assassinate all opponents, 
as orders from high quarters might require. 

" The Earl of Thanet sworn. — He had known Mr. Britton for 
the last twenty years, and his business-like habits recommended 
him to the station he now is in, to serve the Queen ; he has been 
employed, or had a place, at Dover for twenty or thirty years ; and 
this before he was made one of the commissioners of the custom- 
house. 

" Lord Winchilsea. — As for Mr. Merriam, hearing his name, I 
should have said something of him. He is now actually employed 
under Prince George of Denmark, the Prince Consort, and me." — 
Me ! Deputy warden of the cinque ports. 

These very men — these hired street bullies or assassins — though 
convicted, and others indicted, in the county of Kent, for being 
engaged in the villanous machinations and attempts upon the life of 
William Colepeper, were at once, and immediately after the trial, 
advanced to places of honour and profit, by the administration of 
the Earl of Nottingham. 

The above was stated on an appeal to all the judges, by William 
Colepeper, at the bar, defending his own case, dressed in wig and 
gown, as an English barrister, when the Lord Chief Justice inter- 
rupted him, supposing him to reflect upon the government. 

" William Colepeper hoped their lordships and the rest of the 
Queen's judges would inform her Majesty of her admiral, and that 
he would be made a severe example of her justice ; and added, ' My 
lord, I desire your lordship and all the court to take notice of what 
I now say :— Sir George Uooke is the first admiral of England that 

13 



194 LIFE OP DE FOE. 

ever sent a gentleman a challenge, and after it was accepted, em- 
ployed others to fight for him.' " 

Here my Lord Chief Justice and the other judges interrupted 
Mr. Colepeper, on the same grounds as before. 

" My lord," said William Colepeper, going on, " I am the most 
injured gentleman of my country ; the matter of my discourse is 
true; perhaps the manner may be more excusable than justifiable. 
Mr. Denew, from a captain, is made a lieutenant-colonel ; and Mr. 
Knatchbull (one of the indicted of Kent) has a place of £800 per 
annum : both since their crimes." 

"Nathaniel Denew fined 200 marks; Richard Britton J100." 

Soon after this occurrence, the Earl of Nottingham was removed 
from the ministry ; but yet certain officers of the navy were known 
to be hovering about William Colepeper, to shed his blood, if 
possible, in some accidental quarrel, in order to obtain a ship, as 
the reward of the murder, from Sir George Rooke, the lord high 
admiral of the British fleet — a coward himself, and the patron and 
promoter of common street bullies, assassins, and murderers. 

These men, Denew, Britton, Merriam, and Knatchbull, and others, 
to the number of twenty or more, could be easily traced to their 
connection with the Earl of Nottingham, the secretary of state of 
Queen Anne ; to show how things were managed by ministers of 
state in the last reign of the illustrious family of the house of 
Stuart. 

Now, poor De Foe, when he was out of Newgate, was always 
threatened with personal violence by letter, and even by being way- 
laid in the streets by hired bullies or assassins. Could we suppose 
these especial messengers of the Privy Council to be employed in 
his case, or would he be handed over, with a list of others, to some 
rougher class of hired runners of the Home Office ? 

This is fresh ground, and worth ploughing up ; and would afford, 
no doubt, a good return on the labour bestowed. 

Now, suppose we had a Lord Nottinghan now in office, what 
could he do to support Bath-water -drinking admirals , if we had any; 
since fencing at the bottom of Drury Lane, or near St. Clement's 
Church, on a Sunday morning, is out of fashion, and the coach-load 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 195 

of hired villains, cut-throats, fencers, or assassins, sent, with the 
fashion of street- fighting for hire, to Spain or Italy? What is a 
minister to do ? — can he hire a buffoon to laugh down the man that 
civilization, in its fashions, forbids to strike down? Is there not 
the assassin of the pen ? Cannot an obnoxious prater be written 
down ? Is there no writing for hire ? Cannot the seat of corrup- 
tion and of fraud in legislation be protected in its injustice by 
the coach-load of hired villains and assassins of cheap reading and 
buffoonery ? And cannot the battle-field of Little Drury Lane be 
transferred to the self-complacent readings or actings of verbose 
emptiness and foppery of the Lyceum and the Mechanics' Insti- 
tute ? Light reading and light actings and light buffooners, fudges, 
and emptinesses, are the rapiers of our modern street bullies, our 
assassins of state, paid for throwing dust into the eyes of a people 
who seem to be born in the sunshine of fun and frolic, for the 
purpose of disguising the pressure of the yoke which oppresses the 
national body. In this nineteenth century of ours, we have had 
our Nottinghams, ah ! and the Little Drury Lane rapier encounters 
too ! We have the rapier of the pen, cheap literature, and cheap 
acting, to support legislative fraud ! That man — that scoundrel, if 
you like — says that pluralities in the Church of England are a fraud 
— a passing-off of a bad shilling for a good one ; and he adds, too, 
that the minister of state who has dared to do it, is a dishonest, 
a fraudulent man ; and he for one, let consequences be what they 
may, will cry, Stop thief! What says Nottingham to this? Does 
he invite Mr. Merry man to go and dine with him, to concoct a 
theatrical tour of Punch-and- Judy exhibition through the provinces 
— a mountebank display of slack- wire tumbling, conjuring, and 
antics, on the same plea of folly, fraud, and cunning, as James's 
Book of Sunday Sports, really to keep people from thinking, but 
under the pretence of encouraging matrimony ? Could a minister of 
state in the nineteenth century procure a buffoon to write and act 
a book, to hide his own dishonesty ? 

This is a plain question ; but if it can be answered in the affirma- 
tive, the days of Admiral Rooke — protected by the assassins of 
Nottingham, Queen Anne's secretary of state, in shedding the blood 

13* 



196 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

of William Colepeper, for presenting a petition to the House of 
Commons, in the reign of William III., on the state of the coast of 
Kent ; it being left, purposely left, by a French-bought House of 
Commons, in a totally unprotected state ; for the encouragement 
of a French invasion under Louis XIV., on behalf of the exiled 
monarch, James II., a Roman Catholic, degraded tool, and pauper 
or pensioner of the court of France — have not passed away . 



CHAPTER III. 

It may be restated here, that there are seven years of De Foe's life 
unaccounted for : from the time when he left Mr. Morton's academy, 
to his appearing as a hosier in Cornhill ; and during those years he 
must have been employed somewhere, probably as an apprentice to 
the hosiery business ; for no man could take up the trade of hosier 
without learning it. De Foe was a writer and wit, but not a man 
of fixed counting-house book-keeping habits ; and this he acknow- 
ledges to have been his case ; for, when speaking of his failure in 
the hosiery business, he says : — 

" Wit, like mercury and quicksilver, is of use to make silver run, 
and separate the sterling from the dross ; but bring it to the crucible 
by itself, and it flies up in the air like a true spirit, and is lost at 
once. A wit turned tradesman, no apron-strings will hold him; 
'tis in vain to lock him in behind the counter ; he 's gone in a mo- 
ment. Instead of journal and ledger, he runs away to Virgil and 
Horace ; his journal entries are all Pindaricks, and his ledger is all 
heroicks. He is truly dramatic from one end to the other, through 
the whole scene of his trade ; and as the first part is all comedy, so 
the two last acts are always made up with tragedy : a statute of 
bankruptcy is his exeunt omnes ; and he generally speaks the epi- 
logue in the Fleet or the Mint." 

We have seen before, at the chapel prayer, that he was in trouble 
in 1689 ; and in 1692, he had to run away from his creditors when 
his hosiery trade gave way; and now, in 1703, Lord Nottingham's 
prosecution closed the tileyard, caused his coach to be laid down, 
and made him change his residence, and go into a small house. 
There is no doubt but his whole life was a scene of dash and diffi- 
culty, bankruptcy and improvidence; he had great wit, and industry 
in cultivating that wit ; but he was wanting in common prudence 



198 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

and stability. Of these latter qualities, indeed, it is to feared he 
had none. Now, this want of stability would drag him down to 
dependency ; and the dependency would cause him to sell his talent 
for a morsel of bread or a mess of pottage, and stamp him, in the 
estimation of a hard-hearted world, as a scoundrel — a man destitute 
of all worth or principle — a mere hack scribe, who would write or 
do anything for anybody for a shilling. 

Such comes of worshipping Britain's god — Respectability. Re- 
spectable ! — what does it not represent, and what does it not ac- 
complish ? How many thousands and millions has not this deity 
hurled to destruction ? Has it not produced more devastation than 
either war, famine, or pestilence ? I believe it has. This false-god 
worship ruined De Foe, as it has ruined tens of thousands besides. 
Respectability — what is it ? — Pride. This was De Foe's ruin ; but, 
poor fellow ! with all his innate follies, his improvidences, he was a 
great man and a good man ; and he did more by his pen for the 
benefit of mankind than almost any English author that ever lived; 
for his Complete Tradesman alone is, perhaps, one of the best books 
ever printed : a work which did much to form the character of the 
great American, Benjamin Franklin ; and was the very work which 
Franklin might have been supposed to have written — for it is cha- 
racteristic of Franklin throughout — it is Franklin all over. This 
work alone ought to have handed down the name of Daniel De Foe 
with reverence, to the latest posterity of all true Englishmen. De 
Foe was a benefactor of mankind ; yet Pope, in his Dunciad, could 
speak of him as — 

Earless on high stood unabashed De Foe, 
And Tutchin, flagrant from the scourge, below : 

alluding to poor Tutchin being flogged down Dorchester streets for 
his participation in the Monmouth invasion. Swift, also, classes 
De Foe and Tutchin together, and speaks of the former as the fellow 
whose name he had forgotten, but he who had had his ears cut 
off, and had stood in the pillory — an audacious fellow ! Swift and 
Pope ! If nothing but what came through such hands could reach 
posterity, what would history be ? Swift and Pope, the traducers 
of Daniel De Foe, is the real record of history. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 199 

Poor De Foe ! he might be improvident, and he certainly was 
unfortunate ; yes ! he might die in his country's debt £5000 or 
£7000 ; but yet his one work of Robinson Crusoe alone might per- 
haps go far to cancel this deficiency. If all the votes could be taken 
from his time to ours, a period of one hundred and forty years, 
how many a tiny hand would offer from its hoarded halfpence the 
willing offering from a full, a grateful heart, to relieve the author 
of Robinson Crusoe from the imputation of his dying a debtor to 
his country ! When De Foe was in Newgate, and his wife and 
children destitute, he yet could offer sympathy to the poor wrecked, 
plundered mariner on the Goodwin Sands, and denounce the ven- 
geance of Heaven on the town of Deal ; the great harbour of plun- 
derers on the southern coast. 

Those sons of plunder are below my pen, 

Because they are below the names of men ; 

Who from the shores presenting to their eyes 

The fatal Goodwin, where the wreck of navies lies ; 

A thousand dying sailors talking to the skies. 

From the sad shores they saw the wretches walk, 

By signals of distress they talk ; 

There with one tide of life they 're vext, 

For all were sure to die the next. 

The barbarous shores with men and boats abound, 

The men more barbarous than the shores are found ; 

Off to the shattered ships they go, 

And for the floating purchase row. 

They spare no hazard nor no pain ; 

But 'tis to save the goods and not the men. 

Within the sinking suppliants' reach appear, 

As if they 'd mock their dying fear. 

Then for some trifle all their hopes supplant ; 

Which cruelty would make a Turk relent. 

If I had any satire left to write, 

Could I with suited spleen indite, 

My verse should blast that fatal town ; 

No footsteps of it should appear ; 

And ships no more cast anchor there. 



200 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



The barbarous, hated name of Deal should die ; 
Or be a term of infamy ; 
And 'till that 's done, the town will stand, 
A just reproach to all the land. 

In 1704, the bigoted High-Church Tories, Lord Nottingham, 
the Queen's secretary of state, with his party in power, carried 
affairs to so dangerous a pass with their persecution-of-the-dissenters 
spirit, that the Earl of Nottingham and his friends in the minis- 
try were obliged to resign, to free the throne from the threatening 
storm produced by the preaching of Sacheverell and others of the fire- 
and -faggot class ; and by such writers as Leslie, Dunton, Oldmixon, 
Davenant, Ned Ward, Tom Browne, Burnet, Tutchin, De Foe, and 
others. The pretence of the Earl of Nottingham's resignation was 
the royal preference shown to the Whigs ; but the real cause was 
the impression made on her Majesty's mind by the Whigs, that 
her throne was in danger from such advisers as the Earl of Not- 
tingham ; and this impression was given to the royal mind by Sarah 
Duchess of Marlborough, the Queen's groom of the stole and mis- 
tress of the robes, who was not yet displaced by Mrs. Masham, 
Harley's relation. The Earl of Godolphin and the Duke of Marl- 
borough, two men of stable views and common sense, with others, 
not in place but near the throne, were the real guides or leaders, 
regulators or drivers, of the royal mind ; which was, as I have said 
before, a very weak one ; and these two men, with their supporters, 
saved this tottering reign, again and again, from anarchy and con- 
fusion ; for if these men, and such as these, had been removed from 
the royal counsels, and all left to the Earl of Nottingham, Jack 
Howe and others in the Commons, with Sacheverell for Archbishop 
of Canterbury, the poor Queen would have wanted a kingdom in 
less than a month. Everything must be done to conciliate the dis- 
senters, whom Sacheverell from the pulpit, and De Foe from the 
press, were at once giving up in a body to hanging and transporta- 
tion : De Foe very properly arguing, that if Mr. Howe's church 
members would so far play at bo-peep with God Almighty, as to go 
to the steeple-house to receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 201 

in order to be sheriffs or lord mayors, these members would receive 
forty sacraments under the same circumstances, to save themselves 
from being hanged. The Duchess of Marlborough in her Vindica- 
tion, in alluding to the present time and circumstances, writes, " As 
the trade and money of the nation were chiefly in the hands of those 
who espoused the cause in which the ministry (the Whig part of 
it) were then engaged, it is no wonder that my Lord Godolphin 
began to pay them as much regard as the times and the Queen's 
prejudices would permit him to do." All was in danger now, from 
the throne downwards ; and something must be done to conciliate 
the dissenters, the real supporters, as paymasters, of the war then 
carrying on in Europe ; and the first step towards this calming of 
the elements of discord, was the removal of the Earl of Nottingham 
from the ministry, and the placing Harley in his place ; and as De 
Foe, the real uncompromising, though disowned, champion of the 
true dissenting principle, was then a prisoner in Newgate, for writing 
what Sacheverell preached ; and writing, too, with equal force and, 
if you like, coarseness, with the preacher ; something must be done 
to conciliate the man whom neither pillory nor felon's cell in New- 
gate could tame ; for Newgate confinement to him was but a her- 
mitage — a quiet retreat for him to write in ; and the diet, too, would 
keep his head cool and clear, and tend more to sharpen the wit than 
mortify the person. The pen of De Foe never was so fertile as at 
this time ; for he wrote more church- defiance sedition during his 
year of confinement in Newgate, than in any other twelve months 
of his chequered life. 

Amongst other things he wrote the Shortest Way to Peace and 
Union. He also collected his works into one volume ; and this he 
did in self-defence against the low printers of the day, who were 
constantly printing his books in his name, in all forms of paper and 
binding, and with mistakes of all kinds, to his great annoyance. He 
at this time also wrote another satire, entitled King William's 
Affection to the Church of England Examined ; and besides this, 
another pamphlet, More Shoi*t Ways with the Dissenters, in answer 
to a pamphlet by the Rev. Mr, Owen, entitled Moderation a Virtue, 
&c, apologizing for occasional conformity. De Foe replied in another 



202 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

pamphlet, entitled the Sincerity of the Dissenters vindicated from 
the Scandal of Occasional Conformity, &c. On this subject volumes 
were written at this time, advocating and repudiating the practice ; 
but De Foe stood alone on this principle, "that to receive the sacra- 
ment of the Lord's Supper at the table of the Church of England 
merely as a qualification for civic honours in the city of London, was 
a scandalous practice, and a playing at bo-peep with God Almighty." 
This was the ground De Foe stood upon for years, to the great annoy- 
ance of the leading, ambitious, wealthy, time-serving Presbyterians 
of his day. Through this long intricate labyrinth of attempting to 
serve God and mammon by the leading Presbyterians, for civic 
honours — the playing at long-spoon and custard on Lord Mayor's 
day — De Foe appeared to be the only man to stand by a fixed im- 
movable principle on the subject ; and this he did, although deserted 
by the whole body of the time-serving gentility-hunting Presbyte- 
rians of his day ; and he, too, lying in Newgate at the Queen's plea- 
sure, through the bigoted prosecution of her minister, the narrow- 
minded, church-ridden Earl of Nottingham. 

It would be utterly impossible to do justice to half the pamphlets 
published at this time on the subject of occasional conformity, by 
friend or foe; the notorious S ache ver ell being the most violent and 
unscrupulous, though anonymous, writer in favour of the church and 
against the dissenters; and with him was the nonjuror, Charles 
Leslie, the author of the Rehearsal. Against these, stood forward 
several good-natured, conciliating dissenting ministers ; and De Foe 
advocating the same side of the question as Sacheverell and Leslie, 
but from a different motive. Sacheverell, a vain, foolish, empty- 
headed firebrand, thought to crush the dissenters, and raise him- 
self upon the ruins ; but De Foe, like Samson of old, grinding in 
the prison-house of the Philistines, thought of rousing the dissenters 
to a state of desperation, and so obtaining by that convulsive effort 
their perfect liberty, though he should perish in the ruins, by bring- 
ing the house about his own ears and those of the church party. 
Sacheverell was a fool, De Foe was not ; yet they both advocated 
the same principle from opposite motives — Sacheverell to make the 
church triumphant; and De Foe to rouse the whole body of dissenters, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 203 

and make the church of Sacheverell not the church triumphant, but 
the church repentant. 

At the same time, the Presbyterian minister, Owen, who professed 
more of the milk of human kindness and gentlemanly bearing than 
fixity of purpose in defending what was at that time a dangerous and 
unfashionable principle, came to the support of the strongest side, in 
Moderation a Virtue; or the Occasional Conformist justified from the 
the Imputation of Hypocrisy; to whom three parties replied : De Foe, 
in the Sincerity of the Dissenters vindicated from the Scandal of 
Occasional Conformity ; with some Considerations on a late Book 
entitled Moderation a Virtue; Samuel Grascome, a violent non- 
juror writer of the Leslie class ; and a Mrs. Mary Astell, a disciple 
of Dr. Davenant. 

I have no desire to slip over this period of strife on church and 
dissent; but space will not allow anything more than a passing com- 
ment upon half the pamphlets written on this subject at this time. 
Dean Swift, happening to be in London at this eventful period, has 
left on record, that at that time the contention on occasional con- 
formity was so universal, that the dogs in the street took it up, and 
that the cats, Whig and Tory, were debating the question by night 
upon the roof of the house ; and the ladies, too, were split asunder 
into High Church and Low Church, and were so zealous in disputes 
on religion as to have no time to say their prayers. 

On the weeding out of the Earl of Nottingham and his party from 
the ministry, and freeing the country from their dangerous counsels, 
Harley was appointed secretary of state in his place. Harley had 
been thrice successively elected Speaker in the House of Commons, 
and was undoubtedly the most popular man in that heterogeneous 
mass of political conglomeration. Harley being a cunning beater-up 
of friends, he, by cultivating conviviality among all such as were 
fond of good dinners, rendered himself full of parliamentary sup- 
port. Harley was not truly a real hearty good fellow, fond of good 
company and good fare for their own inherent qualities ; but he was 
tricky, ambitious, and a good judge of the ordinary quality of man, 
so as to be able to raise himself to power by pandering to the foibles, 
tastes, and ambitions of others. He climbed into the Speaker's chair 



204 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

in three successive Parliaments, and into the ministry too, and into 
the House of Lords as the Earl of Oxford, through the stomach (I 
wish to use polite words) of the House of Commons. Soon after 
De Foe's commitment to Newgate, the Earl of Nottingham, the 
Queen's secretary of state, had offered him a free pardon at once, 
on the condition that the name of the individual who had put him 
up to writing the obnoxious pamphlet should be disclosed to the 
government ; for it was considered that there was more in that pro- 
duction than appeared upon the surface, and more of statecraft in 
it than the government could suppose a mere hack political writer 
could possess. The government would insist upon the fact, that 
some one of great political sagacity was behind the scene prompting 
De Foe in this work. Would De Foe reveal the name ? No. 

On the tampering with him by the government for the divulging 
the name of his coadjutor, he wrote the following lines in his 
Review : — 

What are thy terrors, that, for fear of thee, 

Mankind can dare to sink their honesty ? 

He 's bold to impudence that dare turn knave, 

The scandal of thy company to save ; 

He that will crimes he never knew confess, 

Does more than if he knew those crimes, transgress ; 

And he that fears thee, more than to be base, 

May want a heart, but does not want a face. 

Sacheverell preached, and De Foe wrote, and both from one text : 
yet the preacher was lauded to the skies as one inspired, to be classed 
with prophets and apostles ; while the writer was cursed to the low- 
est hell, ruined by a government prosecution, and a twelvemonth's 
confinement in Newgate, or longer if the Queen should think fit ; 
for his fine was such as he could never pay ; and, besides these, he 
had been degraded by a three-days' exhibition in the pillory. De 
Foe was not prosecuted for his book- writing, but for his connection 
with some one dreaded by the Earl of Nottingham. De Foe wrote 
his book to overturn the Earl of Nottingham ; the book did over- 
turn the Earl of Nottingham, who was succeeded by Harley ; who, 
on corning to place and power, paid De Foe's fine from the Queen's 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 205 

privy purse, and set him at liberty in the beginning of August, 1704. 
The Queen also sent money to De Foe's wife and children through 
the Lord Treasurer Godolphin. De Foe, writing on this subject, 
observes : — "Being delivered from the distress I was in, her Majesty, 
who was not satisfied to do me good by a single act of her bounty, 
had the goodness to think of taking me into her service ; and I had 
the honour to be employed in several honourable, though secret, 
services, by the interposition of my first benefactor (Harley); who 
then appeared as a member in the public administration. I had the 
happiness to discharge myself in all those trusts, so much to the 
satisfaction of those who employed me, though oftentimes with dif- 
ficulty and danger, that my Lord Treasurer Godolphin, whose me- 
mory I have always honoured, was pleased to continue his favour to 
me, and to do me all good offices with her Majesty, even after an 
unhappy breach had separated him from my first benefactor." 

We will now look back a little into the last twelve months, 
during De Foe's confinement, and survey the political contentions 
of that stirring period — an age in its outpourings from a prolific 
press, from the prose of Leslie to the poetry of Ned Ward. The 
first production, A Hymn to Tyburn, was written as a satire on 
De Foe's Hymn to the Pillory. Then succeeded the True-born 
Hugonot, or Daniel De Foe ; a satire, 1 703. Then, An Equivalent 
for Daniel De Foe. Then, A Pleasant Dialogue between the Pillory 
and Daniel De Foe, by Thomas Browne. Then, Ned Ward enters 
the lists against the chained lion, of which the Dissenting Hypo- 
crite was the title ; and of which the following characteristic lines 
will afford a fair specimen of the poet : — 

The pillory was but a hook 

To make him write another book ; 

This lofty hymn to th' wooden ruff, 

Was to the law a counter-cuff; 

And truly, without Whiggish flattery, 

A. plain assault and downright battery. 

Leslie, in his Rehearsal, charges De Foe with offering to make 
any submission to be excused the pillory exhibition ; which imputa- 
tion De Foe as flatly denies, as a scandalous slander, in one of his 



206 LIFE OF IXE FOE. 

Reviews l . Another pamphlet on another, was thrown upon the 
public by friend and foe. One writes the Shortest Way with Whores 
and Rogues; or, a New Project for Reformation; dedicated to 
Mr. Daniel De Foe, author of the Shortest Way with the Dissenters. 
Another writes the Fox with his Firebrand Unkennelled and En- 
snared; or, a Short Answer to Mr. Daniel Foe's Shortest Way with 
the Dissenters. This author very sagely remarks, that " these crimes 
had cost us too dear in England ; and we don't desire such dialogues, 
or playing the fool betwixt jest and earnest, to bring us back again 
into the same circumstances." This writer might have been the 
Earl of Nottingham himself, for he clearly perceives the power of 
such a book to produce a revolution in this country. The writer 
was right : it had a tendency to produce a revolution ; and, if the 
Earl of Nottingham had not retired from place, it would have pro- 
duced a revolution ; but if it had, who was to blame ? Did De Foe 
set Sacheverell on preaching ? No. Sacheverell preached sermons, 
while De Foe wrote them; and the text was, "Down with the 
bigoted secretary of state, the Earl of Nottingham." It is utterly 
impossible to follow Leslie, Tom Browne, Ned Ward, Tutchin, 
De Foe, Sacheverell, Burnet, Davenant, and others too numerous 
to mention. The press poured out its volumes of contention in all 
forms of pamphlet and broad-sheet; and De Foe added to the amount 
by bringing out thirty pages of satire and six of preface, under the 
title of More Reformation, a satire upon himself. 

In this preface De Foe states, that in future he should write 
nothing without a long preface ; as people cannot understand any- 
thing without a lengthened explanation, so as to comprehend what 
is meant by the writer, and what is not meant. All this refers to 
the dissenters, who had misunderstood his book of the Shortest Way 
with them ; for if he had wished to hang, banish, or destroy the 
whole body, and that the gallows and the galleys should be the 
penalty of going to the conventicle, he must have forgotten that his 
father, wife, and six children, with himself, must be placed in the 

1 A newspaper commenced on Saturday, Feb. 19, 1704, and continued weekly for 
eight numbers ; and then twice a week on Tuesdays and Saturdays for several years, 
under all circumstances and without intermission, up to nine volumes. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 207 

same condition, and subjected to the same penalties. He regrets 
that he had not followed the example of the Dutch artist, who, when 
he had drawn a man and a bear, wrote in large letters under the 
man, "This is a Man" ; and under the bear, "This is a Bear." 
He did this in order to prevent mistakes on the part of the public 
as to the meaning of the drawing. De Foe had not done this; 
and in the neglect, he felt that he had paid a compliment to the 
judgment of his readers at the expense of his own; he had given 
them credit for possessing a quality which they did not possess. He 
complains of his usage from the world, in being charged with all 
sorts of crimes and faults, even to ten thousand more than he ever 
had committed ; and all this was done to him when £50 was offered 
by government for his apprehension, when he had run away, on the 
first discovery of his being the writer of the Shortest Way with the 
Dissenters. 

Now, all this apology on the part of De Foe I consider to be 
quite uncalled for. De Foe pushed Lord Nottingham's own cherished 
principles to their full extent ; till his lordship had to retire from 
the administration, and make way for another. His lordship felt 
just indignation at being displaced from the ministry by his own 
principles being used against him to their utmost and absurd limits ; 
and, in his anger against the man who had injured him, he inflicted 
all the injury in his power. Harley succeeded Lord Nottingham as 
secretary of state ; and, as De Foe had acted with him and for him 
in this business, Harley very justly showed his gratitude by releasing 
De Foe from gaol, paying his fine, supporting his wife and children 
in their destitution by the royal bounty, and taking De Foe into 
the public service, where he, no doubt, performed many confidential 
and important services for his country; as when in Edinburgh, 
advocating the union of the two kingdoms, he had to sit in his bed- 
room, when all his sitting-room windows had been broken by an 
enraged Scotch-interested street mob, some years, though, after the 
period we are now engaged upon. All writers, I think, without 
exception, have looked upon De Foe's Shortest Way with the Dis- 
senters as one of the most witty productions that ever emanated 
from the head of man ; but I must confess, I never could see any 



208 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

wit in it. Lord Nottingham appeared anxious to hang himself; 
and De Foe was determined he should have plenty of string ; which 
Lord Nottingham perceiving, he considered that such hearty good- 
will and willing service foreboded danger and treachery ; and in his 
terror he punished De Foe as severely as he possibly could. He 
punished De Foe ; but yet, all too late ! Lord Nottingham did 
hang himself with his own rope ; and Daniel De Foe furnished the 
hand to supply that rope faster than was required. Lord Notting- 
ham was forced from power by De Foe, and De Foe was punished 
severely for the offence ; this is the fact, and all apology is worse 
than useless. 

Having touched upon the Preface of More Reformation, and dis- 
posed of De Foe's apology for his Shortest Way with the Dissenters, 
I will now turn to this work, and give a short quotation as a speci- 
men of the whole ; for nothing more can be done with a volume of 
thirty pages : — 

He that in satire dips his angry pen, 

To lash the manners and the crimes of men, 

Pretends to bring their vices on the stage, 

And draw the proper picture of the age : 

If he be mortal, if he be a man, 

They '11 make a devil of him if they can. 

The meanest slip shall in a glass be shown, 

That by his faults they may excuse their own : 

So guided by their passions, pride, or fate, 

That they who should reform, recriminate ; 

And he that first reforms a vicious town, 

Prevents then ruin, but completes his own ; 

For, if he were an angel from on high, 

He cannot 'scape the general infamy. 
Again : 

For Pride's the native regent of the mind, 

And where it rules it ruins all mankind ; 

He that pretends to storm it, may as well 

Assault the very counterscarp of hell : 

Ten thousand lesser devils stand within, 

To garrison their frontier town of sin : 



LIFE OF DE FOE, 209 



Again : 



Whom e'er this swelling vapour does possess, 
It never fails their reason to suppress ; 
To struggle with it is a vain pretence, 
It masters all the manners and the sense. 
Shame, Pride's young sister, and herself a vice, 
Prompts Nature next, repentance to despise ; 
She talks of honour, scandal of the times, 
Blushes at reformation, not at crimes. 
Men must be vicious when they have begun ; 
The scandal of acknowledgment to shun, 
They must go on in vice, because they 're in, 
Asham'd t' repent, but not asham'd to sin. 
These arguments the latent cause contain, 
Why mankind are so oft reprov'd in vain. 
Their modesty 's the now uncommon evil ; 
'Tis bad to sin, but to repent 's the devil. 
He that offends may ha' been vice's tool, 
But to acknowledge makes a man a fool ; 
Puts him quite out of fashion in the town ; 
And he that once reforms is twice undone. 
Satire, while men upon such maxims move, 
Expect no quarter, if thou wilt reprove ; 
If e'er, unhappily, thou step'st awry, 
Thy general virtue 's all condemn' d to die ; 
With a full cry they '11 join to hunt thee down 
By th' universal clamour of the town. 



And wouldst thou now describe a modern tool, 
To w r it, to parties, and himself a fool ; 
Embroil'd with state to do his friends no good, 
And by his friends themselves misunderstood ; 
Misconstru'd first in every word he said, 
By those unpitied, and by these unpaid ; 
All men would say the picture was thy own, 
No gazette mark were half so quickly known. 
Thou that for party interest didst indite, 
And thought'st to be excused for meaning right, 

14 



210 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

This comfort will thy want of wit afford, 

That now thou 'rt left a coxcomb on record. 

England had always this one happiness, 

Never to look at service, but success ; 

And he 's a fool that differing judgment makes, 

And thinks to be rewarded for mistakes. 

Kneel, then, upon the penitential stool, 

And freely tell the world that thou 'rt a fool ; 

Which, from thy mouth if they will not believe, 

Thy verse shall lasting testimonies give ; 

A fool, indeed, to advocate for such 

As load thee daily with unjust reproach ; 

A fool, as by the consequence appears, 

To put thy own eyes out to open theirs ; 

A fool, to tell the nation of their crimes, 

And knock thy brains out, to instruct the times. 

Before thee stands the power of punishment, 

In an exasperated government ; 

Behind, the vacant carpet fairly spread, 

From whence thy too-well- served allies are fled. 

At a remoter distance there they stand, 

And mark thy/0%, but thy fault commend ; 

Freely thy former services disown, 

And slyly laugh to see thee first undone. 

Of thy plain action would invert the sense, 

And rail, and counterfeit an ignorance ; 

As if 'twas possible thou should'st intend, 

In one point-blank two opposites offend ; 

These seem'd provok'd, because they will not know 

Thy easy sense ; and those because they do. 

Satire, 'twould certainly appear a crime, 

Not to applaud their policy in rhyme ; 

Who, when poor authors in their quarrel write, 

Can to their safety sacrifice their wit ; 

Wait for the safe event, and wisely try, 

Whether with truth or int'rest to comply. 

As prospects govern, and success directs, 

Their cunning this approves, or that rejects. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 211 

Blush for them, Satire, who thy name abuse, 

And by reproach would gratitude excuse; 

And tell them, as thou may'st be understood, 

Their temper 's wicked, though their cause is good ; 

Yet never thy just principles forsake, 

For that would be to sin because thy friends mistake. 

But bid 'em tell thee, if they can tell how, 

What are the crimes for which they treat thee so ; 

What horrid fact, what capital offence, 

Could bar thee from the priests' benevolence, 

That they their benediction should deny, 

And let thee live unblessed — unpray'd for die. 

Thieves, highwaymen, and murderers are sent 

To Newgate for their future punishment ; 

But all men pity them when they repent : 

Religious charity extorts a prayer, 

And Howe shall freely visit Whitney there. 

Yet three petitioned priests have said thee nay, 

And vilely scorn' d so much as but to pray ; 

Eefus'd the weighty talent of the tribe, 

And let their heat their piety prescribe ; 

Strange power of fear upon the minds of men, 

Which neither sense nor honour can restrain. 

Ask them why they 're exasperated so, 
To baulk the cheapest gift they can bestow. 
Satire, it must ha' been some mortal sin, 
Some strange apostacy of thy unhappy pen, 
That has the reverend fathers so perplex'd ; 
And disobiig'd the masters of the text. 

What, though the scurvy humours of thy head, 

In house of tribulation made thy bed, 

And Fate, which long thine enemy was known, 

Had cloth'd thy tenement in walls of stoue ! 

I know the learned orthodoxly say, 

That after death there is no room to pray: 

But yet no article I ever read 

Has counted men in Newgate with the dead. 

14* 



212 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Satire, look back, and former days review ; 

How stood it once betwixt the tribe and you ? 

In prosperous days, their conscious pride must know, 

You fed those priests that scorn to own you now ; 

With constant charity reliev'd their poor ; 

For which they '11 stone thee, now 'tis in their power. 

With just contempt look back upon their pride, 

And now despise the gift which they deny'd ; 

But let thy charity their crime outlive, 

And, what they seldom practise, now forgive ; 

For Heaven, without their help, upholds thee here : 

He only claims thy thanks who hears thy prayer. 

He can the royal clemency incline ; 

For human grace is centred in divine. 

I have given a much longer quotation from the above poem than 
I had intended, because, as it was written when De Foe was in con- 
finement in Newgate, before his trial and conviction, and when his 
wife and family were in straits and difficulties ; I think it throws 
an interesting light upon De Foe's mind, when a prisoner in New- 
gate under such circumstances. 

It would appear, on a careful perusal of this poem, that an infer- 
ence may be drawn favourable to Lord Nottingham's judgment, in 
the supposition of some party as well as De Foe being concerned in 
the plot ; for the lines, 

" And wouldst thou now describe a modern tool, 
To wit, to parties, and himself, a fool," &c. &c, 

would indicate a connection with one party who did not pity him, 
and another party who did not pay him. Who could these parties 
be ? The Whigs ? No, certainly ; though their true policy would lie 
in this direction, I feel sure it would not be the Whigs who would 
do this. The dissenters would not do it ; for they were all right, as 
they could dissent to the end of the chapter, and conform too, when 
civic honours presented prizes sufficiently valuable for them to con- 
form for; and besides, De Foe and they had quarrelled long ago; 
and three ministers actually refused to pray, either with him or for 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 213 

him, when he lay in Newgate, though one of them came to pray with 
Whitney the horse-stealer. The dissenters had not used De Foe as a 
tool in this business, though some one had. I could fancy the Rev. 
Mr. Howe's correct, well-fed, well-brushed, and well-importanced 
deacon, bustling forward among the first on ''Change, but utterly 
confounded at being mixed up in any conspiracy with Foe the writer 
— how shocked he would be ! — yes — he would not stop at a point 
or two with God Almighty, to play at long-spoon and custard, as my 
lord mayor — but to be mixed up with Foe ! 

Mr. Howe's congregation were too correct to be mixed up with 
De Foe in his Shortest Way with the Dissenters. Again — 

Before thee stands the power of punishment, 
In an exasperated government ; 
Behind, the vacant carpet fairly spread, 
From whence thy too-well-serv d allies are fled. 

Here again we have allusions to allies and desertion ; and indeed 
the whole poem would convey the idea of a man entrapped by the 
designing, who dare not assist him in his difficulty. Now, if Harley 
were De Foe's ally, he, as Speaker of the House of Commons, could 
not aiFord to fly in the face of government, so far as to make common 
cause with a seditious writer confined in Newgate, for writing a 
pamphlet capable of disturbing the peace of the nation, and over- 
turning the ministry; one of whom was now commencing a prose- 
cution against the delinquent, then in confinement. Harley could 
not do this ; he could not move, till the Earl of Nottingham was, 
twelve months afterwards, removed from power ; when Harley, suc- 
ceeding as secretary of state, made what reparation he could to De 
Foe, by releasing him from prison, and employing him under the 
government. 

I believe Harley to have been the man to encourage De Foe to 
write the Shortest Way with the Dissenters, in order to root out the 
bigoted, High -Church, narrow-minded Tory from the ministry; 
though, at the time the encouragement was given, it never was 
supposed that De Foe was likely to get into Newgate through a 
government prosecution. 



214 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

At this time of Tory supremacy, when De Foe was in gaol, and 
Whigs and dissenters were a byword or term of reproach for the 
high-priests and rabble ; when every clerical adventurer thought of 
making his fortune by pandering to the taste of the Queen and the 
High- Church party, the especially appointed supporters or, rather, 
protectors of the church militant, in this realm of Great Britain ; 
the Rev. Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth, must try his chance 
at fortune-making, by traducing the dissenters and their academies. 

This Wesley was related to Dr. Annesley, and to some of the leading 
dissenters of the day ; and by them he had been reared, clothed, 
and educated, as an object of charity ; for his father having died 
when Samuel was young, and having died poor too, young Wesley 
was thrown a legacy upon his mother's relations for food and edu- 
cation. He was at Mr. Morton's academy about the same time 
with De Foe ; but on leaving that he went to Oxford, and made 
his way by flattering royalty ; he could write either prose or poetry, 
and dedicate his work to the Queen for the time being, and then 
ask for a living as the reward of his services; the rectory of Ep- 
worth was one produce of his pen, Queen Mary being the patron ; 
the neighbouring living of Wroot he obtained for bedaubing with 
poetic flattery the Duke of Marlborough, after his victory of Blen- 
heim ; and this traducing of the dissenters in the eventful year of 
1703 was intended, through the royal patronage, to send this time- 
serving flatterer into the archbishopric of Canterbury, upon the 
back of that unprincipled miscreant Dr. Sacheverell. This Wesley 
would have worked his way up by his pen, had it not happened that 
there was a power about the throne superior to the throne itself, and 
all the Tory courtiers assembled by the prospect of the dividing of 
the loaves and fishes of royalty : and that power was the legacy of 
the Whigs, left by King William III. to his prejudiced sister; for 
Queen Anne was emphatically the prejudiced daughter of James II. 
These Whigs, at the head of whom stood Lord Godolphin, overruled 
both the pretensions of Wesley and Sacheverell, at this time, and 
saved the throne. These men did this again and again, with the 
assistance of the bishops sitting in the House of Lords, during the 
reign of Queen Anne. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 215 

To render the dissenters as obnoxious as possible in the sight of 
all parties possessing the least particle of humanity or honesty of 
feeling, Ned Ward, who kept a public-house, and wrote coarse 
poetry in the Hudibrastic style for his customers, together with 
writers and wits equally coarse and unprincipled with himself, raised 
the slander of the Calves' Head Club : a club said to be formed for 
the purpose of commemorating the beheading of the unfortunate 
monarch Charles I. ; and the annual dinner came off on the 30th 
day of January in each year ; when the members {dissenters) ate 
calves' heads and sung anthems; which anthems Ned Ward, and 
other low wits of the time, professed to be so thoroughly acquainted 
with, as to publish them along with their traducing poetic slanders. 
These latter were the men who, at their midnight revelries, drank 
to the mole and the horse — " the two animals/' Poor William III. 
met his death by his horse stumbling at a molehill ; and this cir- 
cumstance afforded mirth to the High-Church wits of Queen Anne's 
reign ; and these wits invented the malignant slander of the Calves' 
Head Club. 

At this eventful period another attempt was made to introduce a 
bill against Occasional Conformity ; which bill was carried through 
the Commons, but thrown out in the Lords by the Lord Treasurer 
Godolphin, his Whig supporters, and — the bench of bishops. Poor 
Dr. Burnet, one of them, and the most active of the bench, had to 
support, through the whole reign, the whole weight of the national 
High-Church slander and malignity : Charles Leslie, the nonjuror 
clergyman, taking the lead as a church-and-state champion, and his 
coadjutors, Tom Browne and Ned Ward, bringing up the rear-guard 
and camp-followers — such an assemblage of unscrupulous writers 
as England never saw, before or since. 

At this time of approaching anarchy, the whole weight of the 
national virtue, responsibility, and safety, rested upon the integrity 
of the House of Lords ; for the Commons were utterly abandoned to 
party strife and Tory subserviency, the effect of the preaching in 
the national church pulpits ; for the church had been falling ever 
since the day that the Queen came to the throne, and Tory prospects 
brightened for restoring the Pretender and destroying the dissenters. 



216 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

What could the people, the masses of England, care for the Pre- 
tender? — what was the house of Stuart to them? — what had the 
Stuart family done for the nation, but involve it in difficulty and 
ruin ? — what ? These are the questions which may be asked, but to 
which no satisfactory answer can be given. The truth is, that the 
people, the masses, the crowd, the mob, are led by impulse, and in- 
fluenced by the gilded glitter and jingling music of wealthy power. 
Church and King ! What glory does it not convey to a hero in his 
cups — ambition drunk ! Ten thousand parishes in England, with 
the ten thousand influences always at work upon the national 
mind, in sickness and in health, in life and in death. The drum- 
ecclesiastic beaten every seventh day by ten thousand hands, what 
noise should there not be raised — what not accomplished by sound 
in running down dissent ; or propping up the vested interest of an 
endowed priesthood ! 

The church threatened by designing infidel men ! What means it? 
— Priestcraft and statecraft shaking hands across the hiccoughing, 
prostrated bodies of besotted ignorance ; for the church is in danger. 
Well ; without going into the growth of national enlightenment, or 
national darkness, we may state that, in 1704, the national position 
was become truly serious, from the excitement produced by the 
national-church preaching ; and a full stop had to be made in the 
onward movement of Toryism, for the salvation of the throne and 
church too. For the dissenters held the money of the nation, and 
the excitement then raging seriously threatened the supplies re- 
quired for carrying on the war against France ; and as Oldmixon 
(an authority I always like to quote), the historian of the time, and 
spiteful traducer of De Foe, observes, in his History of England 
(vol. iii, p. 330), "These great ministers (Marlborough and Godol- 
phin), supported by the encouragement of Prince George of Den- 
mark, and the continual insinuations of a lady, then nearest the 
Queen's person and heart (Sarah Duchess of Marlborough), over- 
came her Majesty's strong inclination to the cause for which she 
had so often heard it said in the pulpit, her royal grandfather was a 
martyr ; and prevailed with her to put her affairs into such hands 
as her allies and her best subjects could confide in." This is what 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 217 

I have said before, again and again; and only repeat it here to bring 
in Oldmixon, the living British historian of the time, the bitter 
antagonist of De Foe, and slanderer of the dissenters on all 
occasions. 

It may be observed here, that Sarah Duchess of Marlborough 
was the instrument for good in the hands of Lord Cowper, Lord 
Godolphin, Lords Somers, Newcastle, Devonshire, Marlborough, 
Halifax, &c, and was one of the greatest women that England ever 
knew ; and that to her a debt of gratitude is due from this nation, 
for the exercise of her influence over Queen Anne, who was a very 
narrow-minded, weak woman, the daughter of a narrow-minded, 
bigoted father. For twenty-seven years, Sarah Duchess of Marl- 
borough exercised a controlling influence over the mind of her weak 
mistress ; which influence held in the narrow religious influences of 
her sovereign so far, as to cause her to pass through her reign of 
twelve years without a revolution and an ignominious flight to Saint 
Germains; where she might have ended her life an outcast from her 
dominions, and a pensioner on the bounty of the court of France, 
as her fathers had been. 

At this time some one wrote a pamphlet under the title of Legion's 
Humble Address to the Lords, and urged the necessity of dissolving 
or abolishing the Commons — for the term used does not appear very 
definite — so that they be got rid of, as betrayers of the people. He 
complains also of Maidstone being disfranchised illegally; and of 
the partial proceedings on the Aylesbury election; and of the great 
partiality shown by the Commons in prosecuting public defaulters, 
and in reassuming the grants made by the late King William, 
while all other royal grants were allowed to pass undisputed ; and 
also of their complimenting the Queen on her hereditary right, at 
the expense, or to the disadvantage, of her parliamentary title ; and 
of their addressing her to extend her royal prerogative, in order to 
embroil her with the House of Lords. On the other hand, the 
Lords are applauded for their patriotism in standing by the rights 
of the people; and an intimation is given to their Lordships that the 
freeholders of England would defend their Lordships in all their 
privileges ; and this they would do with their properties and lives. 



218 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

This address was subscribed " Our name is Million, and we are 
more." 

Of course, this ungentlemanly production caused great annoyance 
to the Tories; and the wide circulation, too, of so obnoxious and 
unconstitutional a document, by thousands of copies, through the 
country, caused great alarm to these Tories, who represented their 
fears and the danger to the country to be such as to demand the 
immediate attention of the secretary of state, and a government 
prosecution ; when the government, to soothe and conciliate these 
poor frightened tools of the French interest, issued a royal pro- 
clamation, offering a reward of £100 for the apprehension of the 
author, and ,£50 for the apprehension of the printer; but this 
movement on the part of government availed nothing, for neither 
author nor printer was arrested. Probably the twelve months' 
confinement in Newgate had sharpened the wit as well as the pen 
of De Foe ; but, be that as it may, no information was given to the 
government as to either the one or the other — author or printer. 

A Tory writer answered this Legion Memorial ; and he pointed to 
a little lord, and a Whiggish crew he entertained as his associates, as 
the authors of the Legion Memorial. This was evidently an allusion 
to the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, the head of the ministry; who was 
a very little man, and leader of the Whigs. Although this writer 
might wish to annoy the head of the government by his insinuations 
that the high-minded Lord Godolphin was connected with placard 
or pamphlet writing, this could only be done as a malignant insult 
on the government, and an insult offered by but one writer only — 
a Tory. 

As for the generality of writers, lampooners, or political specu- 
lators — the quidnuncs of the day — they had but one opinion as to 
the writer, and he was universlly named by them as De Foe ; for it 
was well known that he had written the Memorial to the Commons, 
and this Memorial to the Lords corresponded with his princi- 
ples, and the style also betrayed the writer ; for De Foe's vigorous 
epithets, and resolute use of vigorous healthy language, to represent 
firm, vigorous, and healthy ideas, could not be mistaken by the 
constant readers of the Review, De Foe's newspaper, which was 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 219 

published twice in each week, and was made instrumental to adver- 
tise De Foe's pamphlets ; and also to elucidate the doctrines enun- 
ciated in those pamphlets. Whenever De Foe wrote an important 
pamphlet, his Review was never to seek to back the principle, but 
was always, I believe, involved as a partisan, in support of the doc- 
trine advanced in the pamphlet. 

The Tories could not rest satisfied with the mere spreading the 
report of his being the author of the Memorial to the Lords ; but 
they must give out, too, that he had run away immediately upon 
the <s8100 reward appearing in the London Gazette for the appre- 
hension of somebody for the secretary of state. Poor De Foe was 
living quietly, writing his books, at Bury St. Edmund's, in Suffolk; 
and, of course, he would be very much annoyed to find his name in 
every Tory trashy paper of the day, as a runaway author — writer 
— pamphleteer. 

Poor fellow ! his credit was so involved in these reports that he 
had to declare the place of his abode, where he was willing to show 
himself to all comers at the price usually paid for seeing a monkey; 
namely, twopence a head ; or, if that was too much, he might be 
seen like a quack-doctor, for nothing, at his own house, from eight 
to twelve, and from two till nine. 

Whether De Foe wrote this second Memorial has never been 
proved ; but if he did, certainly the prime minister, Godolphin, could 
have had no concern in the matter, for he was no placard or pamphlet 
writer ; but if a hint had been hazarded that one of the secretaries 
of state, Harley, had had a hand in such a production, from some 
state reason or other, known to no mortal but himself, some cre- 
dence might have been afforded to such a report, for Harley was 
very tricky, intriguing, and, to mortal eyes, very erratic, in his course 
as a politician. The whole course of this man's career was a sinister, 
intriguing, suspicious one ; giving good dinners to fools, and using 
them, when filled with gratitude, for the serving his private inte- 
rests and views, was the very lifeblood of Harley's existence; for he 
was, emphatically, a tricky, quirking man. 

De Foe was of opinion that his Shortest Way with the Dissenters 
was the cause of the break-up of the administration consequent upon 



220 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

the national religious excitement of the time ; this, De Foe writes 
many times in his several works, particularly in his Review ; and 
there is no doubt but De Foe's prosecution, and confinement 
in Newgate for twelve months, did break up the Nottingham- 
Buckingham- Seymour part of the administration, for the clearing 
the way for the more liberal men, and, consequently, more liberal 
measures. 

This tight-laced High- Church party retired from the ministry to 
give place to better men in April 1704, while De Foe was a prisoner 
in Newgate for writing that pamphlet which caused the excitement 
that broke up this ministry. By Lord Nottingham was De Foe 
prosecuted, and condemned to confinement in Newgate during the 
Queen's pleasure (for such really was the sentence) ; and De Foe's 
confinement was the cause of the Earl of Nottingham's removal from 
the ministry ; this De Foe affirms, and he was right in his affirma- 
tion. The Earl of Nottingham was a cipher in the course of the 
national career ; and had he not been known as the prosecutor of 
Daniel De Foe, no one would have heard of such an insignificant 
being ; but, insignificant as he was, he was a narrow-minded, bigoted 
secretary of state, who involved himself in a foolish government pro- 
secution of Daniel De Foe, which caused his removal from office to 
make way for a more liberal minister, and more liberal measures for 
the Protestant dissenters of Great Britain. This is what De Foe's 
Shortest Way with the Dissenters did for the dissenters ; though the 
publication of that book ruined De Foe's family, and sent him to a 
pillory and a gaol. 

In April 1704, De Foe published his pamphlet entitled More 
Short Ways with the Dissenters, in answer to the malignities of 
the rector of Epworth, Samuel Wesley, and Dr. Sacheverell : two 
pamphleteers who expected to steer their course to the archbishopric 
of Canterbury, through the dishonest malignities of pamphleteer- 
ing ; and they, when seated in the House of Lords, would not have 
been the only clergymen, before that time or since, elevated to the 
peerage by writing the political slang of party pamphlets. But, 
fortunately for this country, the Lord Treasurer was too honest a 
man, and too great a statesman, to make up a bench of bishops 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 221 

by party slang writers, or unprincipled religious persecutors; so 
both these writers found themselves neglected by the minister. 

In 1704, also, De Foe published the Dissenters Misrepresented 
and Represented; in which he says that the church party are so hot 
and bitter, that they cannot hold their persecuting spirit in check 
till the Occasional Bill is passed, but they want to deprive dissent- 
ers from voting for parliament-men as freeholders ; and he even 
recommends the taking the freeholds themselves away, as being 
equally just with taking away the rights and privileges which the 
freeholds give; and that another late author had found out the 
way to crush the dissenters, by having all their children educated in 
the principles of the Church of England — a policy copied from the 
court of Louis XIV. of France, who tried every method to extirpate 
dissenters in France, and this method the last, when all other plans 
appeared to fail. I wish we could say that this policy of Louis XIV. 
had never been imported into this country since that period ; but, 
alas ! the Privy- Council system of education is only a revival of the 
same principle, for the attaining the same end, the crushing the dis- 
senters ; and this, too, one hundred and thirty years after the death 
of Daniel De Foe. Dissenters there were, and dissenters there are, 
and will be, so long as there remain injustice in religious matters ; 
dishonest legislation on church matters ; pluralities legalized by my 
Lord John Russell, on the principle that a man, an Englishman, 
may be robbed, provided you can prove by legal evidence that he 
is only a poor man. Dissenter-extirpating plots have been common. 
It is not for me to go into all these several schemes for deluding 
and debasing the people, or conspiracies, if you will pardon the term, 
under the pretence of guiding or educating the people; for such they 
are ; but merely to make a remark or two on them in passing, when 
reviewing the chequered life of Daniel De Foe, and occasionally 
comparing his times with our own. 

In July of this year, 1704, De Foe published A New Test of the 
Church of England's Honesty. In this pamphlet he regrets that he 
did not on his trial take a decisive stand, and, by way of defence, 
show to the jury that the shortest way with t'ie dissenters was the 
sedition preached constantly from the pulpits of the Church of 



222 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

England, printed, too, in a Church -of-En gland University; and 
officially licensed and owned by the Church- of- England authority. 
He only printed what Sacheverell preached and wrote in his Political 
Union, licensed by the vice-chancellor of Oxford. De Foe affirms 
that whatever others might do, he was sure no English jury would 
have brought him in guilty ; he felt sure of an acquittal if he had 
appealed to a British jury. If he had so appealed, he might have 
been acquitted; but the times were so corrupt, and the tide of popular 
opinion running so quickly and counter to common sense, justice, 
or honesty, that the result of an appeal to a jury could not have 
been predicted with any certainty. 

People at this time (1 704) were mad for the Church of England, 
Toryism, and Stuart or Pretender ascendency; with as deadly a 
hatred of all Presbyterians, Whigs, or Dutchmen. Such is the 
power of preaching, church-endowed preaching, backed by a know- 
ledge that the sovereign at the time filling the throne has views on 
all matters descanted on, in hearty union with the text. " Great 
is Diana of the Ephesians " was a hearty, a loyal shout, backed as 
it was by the high -priests and master shrine-makers, the whole 
wealth and respectability of Ephesus, lay and clerical ; while Paul, 
a stranger, a poor low fellow, who had not five shillings in his pocket, 
aid knew nobody — who was he ? 

Leslie, the High- Church champion, complains of De Foe's two 
pamphlets, the New Test of the Church of England's Loyalty, and 
the New Test of the Church of England's Honesty, " as full of scur- 
rility, and calculated for mob understandings ; and that for peace* 
sake no answer has hitherto been given by any of the church to 
either of these invidious pamphlets, though they have been trum- 
peted up and down both town and country more than any other 
since the Revolution, and are boasted of as unanswerable by all the 
dissenters, who triumph in them." Leslie blustered and complained, 
and threatened to answer ; since every Whig, Dissenter, or Low- 
Churchman was asking the question, why the Highflyers did not 
answer De Foe? 

Leslie complained and threatened, but answered nothing by 
pamphlet ; but in his paper, started at this time, and named the 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 223 

Rehearsal, published in opposition to De Foe's Review, and Tutchin's 
Observator, made, from time to time, occasional reflections on De 
Foe, and these his " pernicious * writings. 

De Foe's writings had such an extensive sale, that all sorts of 
mean devices were resorted to, to cheat the author. Mean, low 
printers, who wanted bread, hawked in the streets any trash of com- 
position, in prose and verse ; and in order to excite attention, and 
force a sale for such trash, they attached the signature of ' ' Daniel 
De Foe, author of the True-Born Englishman." This dishonour- 
able and injurious practice was carried to so great an extent, that he 
had to apply to the magistrate occasionally for protection. His own 
" Scandal Club/' forming one division of his Review, was employed 
as an advertisement of such abuse, as follows : — 

"July 25. The author of the True-Born Englishman was sum- 
moned before the club, upon the complaint of a poor hawker, who 
was sent to Bridewell lately. The poor woman had cried abundance 
of scoundrel papers — Trip to the Devil's Summer -house ; High Flyer; 
Low Flyer, and the like ; all as written by the author of the True- 
Born Englishman; for which he made complaint to the magistrate, 
and had laid hold of this one by way of example. The woman 
insisted that he was the author of it, and summoned in a crowd of 
printers to justify it, they having ordered her to cry it so, and told 
her it was true ; but when the poor woman wanted her vouchers, 
none of them would appear. The author, to prove the negative in 
the particular paper which the woman was taken with, viz., the 
Picture of a High Flyer, produced the very paper, varied only in a 
few proper names, printed above twenty years ago ; being written 
by Henry Care, and called the Character of a Tory. The society 
pitied the poor woman, and let her go ; but resolved that the printers 
should stand convicted of petty forgery, and be bound once a week 
to repeat the following lines a la penitent, as a further satisfaction 
to the author : — 

" The mob of wretched writers stand, 
With storms of wit in every hand ; 
They bait my mem'ry in the street, 
And charge me with the credit of their wit. 



224 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

I bear the scandal of their crimes ; 

My name 's the hackney title of the times. 

Hymn, song, lampoon, ballad, and pasquinade, 

My recent memory invade : 

My muse must be the whore of poetry, 

And all Apollo's bastards laid to me." 

Besides the common street hawkers of penny trash using his 
name to sell their worthless broad-sheets and penny ballads, authors 
of more apparent respectability either stole his name to set off their 
trash, or attacked him by name, in what were termed the Hudi- 
brastic verse. This poetry was written by Ned Ward, the great ale- 
house poet and wit of the time, who worked in the ranks of the 
strongest side, as all such characters always do ; and at this time 
Church and King would be the grand sheet-anchor of this fellow's 
existence ; for his slanderous attacks were generally levelled at De 
Foe and Tutchin, the representatives of the dissenting or liberal 
party; poor De Foe having stood three times in the pillory; and 
Tutchin having been flogged once at least, tied to a cart-tail, down 
Dorchester streets. 

The Comical History of the Life and Death of Mumper, General- 
issimo of King Charles II.' s Dogs, by Heliostropolis, secretary to the 
Emperor of the Moon, was written by De Foe about this time ; and 
also a Dictionary of Religions, Ancient and Modern, whether Jewish, 
Pagan, Christian, or Mahometan. This was the first general Dic- 
tionary of Religions published in the English language. 

On Aug. 29, 1704, De Foe published his Hymn to Victory, in 
compliment to the Duke of Marlborough, with five pages of poetic 
preface to the Queen, and thirty pages of poetic congratulation to 
the Duke ; the preface commencing thus : — 

Madam, the glories of your happy reign 

Are sealed from heaven, and hell resists in vain ; 

You're doubly blest with strange exalted joy : 

At home with peace — abroad with victory. 

If this is but the earnest of your fame, 

To what strange height will Heaven exalt your name ; 

And what seraphick thoughts must fill your mind, 

When you reflect on glories still behind. 



CHAPTER IV. 

After his release from Newgate, De Foe took up his residence at 
Bury St. Edmund's, in Suffolk, as we have seen, where he resided 
in quietness, writing his books ; but remained so long, that the Tory 
scamps of the day (for such were the paid scribes of that party for 
the most part) had to invent the slander, that he had run away from 
justice ; in short, that he had not been seen since the £] 00 reward 
had been offered in the London Gazette for the apprehension of the 
writer of the Memorial to the Lords ; and also that a government 
warrant was out against him as the author of this Memorial. This 
slander having so constantly appeared in the Tory Rehearsals, 
Observators, Craftsmen, True Britons, Examiners, Corn-cutter 's' 
Journal, and other newspapers or pamphlets, from Leslie down to 
Browne and Ward, that poor De Foe's credit was completely im- 
paired ; at least he intimates as much in his Review at the time ; so 
that he had to advertise himself in his own Review as living at large 
at Bury St. Edmund's, where he could be found at any time ; and, 
as government had been mixed up with his retirement, and the 
slander of his having absconded, he wrote to the secretary of state 
to inform him that, if a government warrant was really out against 
him, he might be found living at Bury St. Edmund's ; to which 
notification he received a friendly reply, that the government were 
not in search of him. 

On Nov. 4 he thus writes in his Review, page 291 : — 

cc Whereas, in several written news-letters dispersed about the 
country, and supposed to be written by one Dyer, a news-writer, and 
by Mr. Fox, bookseller in Westminster Hall, it has falsely, and of 
mere malice, been scandalously asserted that Daniel De Foe was 
absconded and fled from justice ; that he had been searched for by 

15 



226 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

messengers, could not be found, and more the like scoundrel expres- 
sions; the said Daniel De Foe hereby desires all people who are 
willing not to be imposed upon by the like villanous practices, to 
take notice, that the whole story is a mere genuine forgery, indus- 
triously and maliciously contrived, if possible, to bring him into 
trouble ; that the said Daniel De Foe, being at St. Edmund's Bury, 
in Suffolk, when the first of these papers appeared, immediately 
wrote to both her Majesty's secretaries of state, to acquaint them 
with his being in the country on his lawful occasions ; and to let 
them know that, on the least intimation from them, he would come 
up by post, and put himself into their hands, to answer any charge 
that should be brought against him. That, as soon as his business 
was over in the country, he made his humble complaint of this un- 
precedented usage to the secretary of state ; and had the honour to 
understand, that no officer, messenger, or other person had received 
any order, warrant, or other direction to search for, apprehend, or 
otherwise disturb the said Daniel De Foe, or that there was any com- 
plaint or charges brought against him. And further, having been 
informed that Mr. Robert Stephens, the messenger, had reported 
that he had an order or power from the secretaries of state to stop 
and detain the said Daniel De Foe, and that he made several inquiries 
after him to that purpose; the said Daniel De Foe hereby gives 
notice, that as soon as he came to town, and before his application 
to the secretary of state, he went, and in the presence of sufficient 
witnesses, spoke with the said Robert Stephens, the messenger, as 
he calls himself, of the press ; and, offering himself into his custody, 
demanded of him if he had received any order to detain him ; and 
he denied that he had any such order, notwithstanding he had most 
openly, and in villanous terms, repeated before that he would detain 
him if he could find him, and had, in a scandalous manner, made 
inquiries after him. The said Daniel De Foe, having no other 
remedy against such barbarous treatment but by setting the matter 
in a true light, thinks he could do no less, in justice to the govern- 
ment and himself, than make this publication; and further, he 
hereby offers the reward of <£20 to any person that shall discover to 
him, so as to prove it, the author and publisher of any of those news- 



LIFE OF DE FOE= 227 

letters in which those reports were published ; which shall be paid 

immediately, upon such proof made, at the publishers of this paper. 

" Witness my hand, " Daniel De Foe." 

At this time (1704), De Foe wrote his celebrated pamphlet, 
Giving Alms no Charity. It was intended as an answer to Sir Hum- 
phrey Mackwortb/s bill, then introduced into the Commons, for 
employing the poor, by establishing houses of industry or, properly, 
workhouses, in the original meaning of the term — houses for em- 
ploying the parish poor in working. This publication appeared as 
an Address to the House of Commons from an English Freeholder ; 
for as such he claimed a right to be concerned in the good of that 
community of which he was an unworthy member ; and that this 
honourable House is the representative of all the freeholders of 
England; for he says, "You are assembled for their good; you 
study their interest; you possess their hearts, and you hold the 
strings of the general purse." In this address he attributes to Queen 
Elizabeth the importation of Dutch and Flemish manufactures, for 

" The Queen [Elizabeth] who knew the wealth and vast numbers 
of people which the said manufactures had brought to the neigh- 
bouring countries, then under the King of Spain, the Dutch being not 
yet revolted, never left off endeavouring, what she happily brought 
to pass, viz., the transplanting into England those springs of riches 
and people. She saw the fountain of all this wealth and workman- 
ship — I mean the wool — was in her own hands; and Flanders became 
the seat of all these manufactures, not because it was naturally richer 
and more populous than other countries, but because it lay near 
England ; and the staple of English wool, which was the foundation 
of all the wealth, was at Antwerp, in the heart of that country. 

" From hence it may be said of Flanders : It was not the riches 
and the number of people brought the manufactures into the Low 
Countries, but it was the manufactures brought the people thither ; 
and multitudes of people make trade ; trade makes wealth ; wealth 
builds cities; cities enrich the land round them ; land enriched, rises 
in value ; and the value of lands enriches the government. 

" Many projects were set on foot in England to erect the woollen 

15* 



228 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

manufacture here ; and in some places it had found encouragement, 
before the days of this Queen, especially as to making of cloth ; but 
stuffs, bays, says, serges, and such-like wares, were yet wholly the 
work of the Flemings. 

" At last an opportunity offered, perfectly unlooked for, viz., the 
persecution of the Protestants, and introducing the Spanish Inqui- 
sition into Flanders, with the tyranny of the Duke d'Alva. 

" It cannot be an ungrateful observation here to take notice how 
tyranny and persecution — the one an oppression of property, the 
other of conscience — always ruin trade, impoverish nations, depopu- 
late countries, dethrone princes, and destroy peace. 

" When an Englishman reflects on it, he cannot without infinite 
satisfaction look up to Heaven, and to this honourable House, that 
as the spring, this as the stream, from and by which the felicity of 
this nation has obtained a pitch of glory superior to all the people 
in the world. 

" Your councils especially, when blest from Heaven, as now we 
trust they are, with the principles of unanimity and concord, can 
never fail to make trade flourish, war successful, peace certain, wealth 
flowing, blessings probable, the Queen glorious, and the people happy. 
Our unhappy neighbours of the Low Countries were the very reverse 
of what we bless ourselves for in you. Their kings were tyrants, 
their governments persecutors, their armies thieves and blood- 
hounds; their people divided, their councils confused, and their 
miseries innumerable. 

" D'Alva, the Spanish governor, besieged their cities, decimated 
the inhabitants, murdered the nobility, proscribed their princes, and 
executed 18,000 men by the hand of the hangman. Conscience was 
trampled under foot, religion and reformation hunted like a hare 
upon the mountains ; the Inquisition threatened, and foreign armies 
introduced. 

( ' Property fell a sacrifice to absolute power ; the country was 
ravaged, the towns plundered, the rich confiscated, the poor starved, 
trade interrupted, and the tenth penny demanded. 

" The consequence of this was, as in all tyrannies and persecutions 
it is, the people fled and scattered themselves in their neighbours' 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 229 

countries, trade languished, manufactures went abroad and never 
returned, confusion reigned, and poverty succeeded. The multitude 
that remained, pushed to all extremities, were forced to obey the 
voice of Nature, and in their own just defence to take arms against 
their governors. 

" Destruction itself has its uses in the world : the ashes of one 
city rebuild another ; and God Almighty, who never acts in vain, 
brought the wealth of England and the power of Holland into the 
world from the ruin of the Flemish liberty. 

" The Dutch in defence of their liberty revolted, renounced their 
tyrant prince, and, prospered by Heaven and the assistance of Eng- 
land, erected the greatest commonwealth in the world. 

" As D'Alva worried the poor Flemings, the Queen of England 
entertained them, cherished them, invited them, encouraged them. 

" Thousands of innocent people fled from all parts, from the fury 
of this merciless man ; and as England, to her honour, has always 
been the sanctuary of her distressed neighbours, so now she was so, 
to her special and particular profit. 

" The Queen [Elizabeth] who saw the opportunity put into her 
hands which she had so long wished for, not only received kindly the 
exiled Flemings, but invited over all that would come, promising 
them all possible encouragement, privileges, and freedom of her 
ports and the like. This brought over a vast multitude of Flemings, 
Walloons, and Dutch, who, with their whole families, settled at 
Norwich, at Ipswich, Colchester, Canterbury, Exeter, and the like. 
From these came the Walloon Church at Canterbury, and the Dutch 
Churches in Norwich, Colchester, and Yarmouth ; from hence came 
the true-born English families in those places with foriegn names; 
as the De Vinks at Norwich, the Rebows at Colchester, the Papilons 
&c. at Canterbury : families to whom this nation are much in debt, 
for the first planting those manufactures from which we have since 
raised the greatest trades in the world. 

" This wise Queen [Elizabeth] knew that numbers of inhabitants 
are the wealth and strength of a nation ; she was far from that 
opinion, we have of late shown too much of, in complaining that 
foreigners came to take the bread out of our mouths, and ill treating 



230 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

on that account the French Protestants who fled hither for refuge 
in the late persecutions. 

" Some have said that above 50,000 of them settled here, and 
would have made it a grievance, though, without doubt, His easy to 
make it appear that 500,000 more would be both useful and profit- 
able to this nation. 

" Upon the settling of these foreigners, the scale of trade visibly 
turned both here and in Flanders. The Flemings taught our women 
and children to spin, the youth to weave ; the men entered the loom 
to labour, instead of going abroad to seek their fortunes by the war ; 
the several trades of bayes at Colchester, saves and perpets at Sud- 
bury, Ipswich, &c, stuffs at Norwich, serges at Exeter, silks at 
Canterbury, and the like, began to flourish. All the countries round 
felt the profit ; the poor were set to work, the traders gained wealth, 
and multitudes of people flocked to the several parts where these 
manufactures were erected, for employment and the growth of Eng- 
land, both in trade, wealth, and people, since that time, as is well 
known to this honourable House ; so the causes of it appear to be 
plainly the introducing of these manufactures, and nothing else." 

The above is the substance of the introduction to this valuable 
essay on employing the poor, without inflicting a sensible injury on 
the community by the employment. De Foe, in 1704, was tho- 
roughly master of this branch of political economy, and was far in 
advance of the age in which he lived ; for he states that every session 
of every Parliament since the Restoration, had had its act for em- 
ploying the poor in workhouses, at the expense of the rest of the 
community, of tax-payers, and sellers of labour for what we term 
wages. In De Foe's time and in ours, there has always been a full 
supply of weak-minded philanthropists who would rob the commu- 
nity to have the credit of making a rogue-and-vagabond into an 
honest man. De Foe knew this fully, and has written well upon 
the subject ; and a clear principle of political economy in 1704 is 
rather a curiosity. I will go into the subject more fully, to show 
my hero in this character. 

"I. There is in England more labour than hands to perform it; 
and, consequently, a want of people, not of employment. 



LIFE Or DE FOE. 231 

" 2. No man in England, of sound limbs and senses, can be poor 
merely for want of work. 

"3. All our workhouses, corporations, and charities, for employ- 
ing the poor, and setting them to work, as now they are employed, 
or any acts of Parliament to empower overseers of parishes, or 
parishes themselves, to employ the poor, except as shall be hereafter 
excepted, are and will be public nuisances ; mischiefs to the nation, 
which serve to the ruin of families and the increase of the poor. 

<( That His a regulation of the poor that is wanted in England, 
not a setting them to work. 

" If after these things are made out, I am inquired of what this 
regulation should be, I am no more at a loss to lay it down, than I 
am to affirm what is above ; and shall always be ready, when called 
to it, to make such a proposal to this honourable House, as with 
their concurrence shall for ever put a stop to poverty and beggary, 
parish charges, assessments, and the like, in this nation. 

"If such offers as these shall be slighted and rejected, I have the 
satisfaction of having discharged my duty; and the consequence must 
be, that complaining will be continued in our streets. 

" "lis my misfortune, that, while I study to make every head so 
concise, as becomes me in things to be brought before so honourable 
and august an assembly, I am obliged to be short upon heads that 
in their own nature would very well admit of particular volumes to 
explain them. 

" First, I affirm that in England there is more labour than hands 
to perform it. This I prove :— 

"1. From the dearness of wages, which in England outgoes all 
nations in the world ; and I know no greater demonstration in trade. 
Wages, like exchanges, rise and fall as the remitters and drawers, 
the employers and the workmen, balance one another. 

" The employers are the remitters, the workmen are the drawers. 
If there are more employers than workmen, the price of wages must 
rise, because the employer wants that work to be done more than 
the poor man wants to do it; if there are more workmen than 
employers, the price of labour falls, because the poor man wants his 
wages more than the employer wants to have his business done. 



232 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

" Trade, like all nature, most obsequiously obeys the"great law of 
cause and consequence ; and this is the occasion why even all the 
greatest articles of trade follow, and as it were pay homage to, this 
seemingly minute and inconsiderable thing — the poor man's labour. 

" I omit, with some pain, the many very useful thoughts that 
occur on this head, to preserve the brevity I owe*to the dignity^of 
that assembly I am writing to. But I cannot t; but notejiow from 
hence it appears, that the glory, the strength, the riches, the trade, 
and all that's valuable in a nation, as to its figure in the world, 
depend upon the number of its people, be they never so mean or 
poor ; the consumption of manufactures increases the manufactures; 
the number of manufacturers increases the consumption; provi- 
sions are consumed to feed them; land improved, and more hands 
employed, to furnish provisions. All the wealth of the nation, and all 
the trade, is produced by numbers of people ; but of this by the way. 

" The price of wages not only determines the difference between 
the employer and the workman, but it rules the rates of every 
market. If wages grow high, provisions rise in proportion ; and I 
humbly conceive it to be a mistake in those people, who say labour 
in such parts of England is cheap because provisions are cheap; 
but 'tis plain, provisions are cheap there, because labour is cheap, 
and labour is cheaper in those parts than in others ; because, being 
remoter from London, there is not that extraordinary disproportion 
between the work and the number of hands ; there are more hands, 
and, consequently, labour is cheaper. 

" Tis plain to any observing eye, that there is an equal plenty of 
provisions in several of our south and western counties, as in York- 
shire, and rather a greater ; and I believe I could make it out, that 
a poor labouring man may live as cheap in Kent or Sussex as in 
the bishopric of Durham ; and yet, in Kent, a poor man shall earn 
7s., 10s., 9s. , a week, and in the North, 4s., or perhaps less. The 
difference is plain in this, that in Kent there is a greater want of 
people, in proportion to the work there, than in the North. And 
this, on the other hand, makes the people of our northern counties 
spread themselves so much to the south, where trade, war, and the 
sea, carrying off so many, there is a greater want of hands. And 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 233 

yet 'tis plain there is labour for the hands which remain in the 
North, or else the country would be depopulated, and the people 
come all away to the South to seek work ; and even in Yorkshire, 1 
where labour is cheapest, the people can gain more by their labour 
than in any of the manufacturing countries of Germany, Italy, or 
France, and live much better. If there was one poor man in Eng- 
land more than there was work to employ, either some body else 
must stand still for him, or he must be starved; if another man 
stands still for him, he wants a day's work, and goes to seek it, and 
by consequence supplants another, and this a third ; and this con- 
tention brings it to this : — ' No/ says a poor man, that is like to be 
put out of his work, ' rather than that man shall come in, I '11 do it 
cheaper/ — 'Nay/ says the other, ' but I '11 do it cheaper than you.' 
And thus one poor man wanting but a day^ work would bring 
down the price of labour in a whole nation ; for the man cannot 
starve, and will work for anything rather than want it. 

"It may be objected here : this is contradicted by our number of 
beggars. 

" I am sorry to say I am obliged here to call begging an employ- 
ment, since 'tis plain, if there is more work than hands to perform 
it, no man that has his limbs and his senses need to beg, and those 
that have not, ought to be put into a condition not to want it. So 
that begging is a mere scandal in the general ; in the able 'tis a 
scandal upon their industry; and in the impotent, 'tis a scandal 
upon the country. Nay, the begging, as now practised, is a scandal 
upon our charity, and perhaps the foundation of all our present 
grievances. How can it be possible that any man or woman, who, 
being sound in body and mind, may, as 'tis apparent they may, have 
wages for their work, should be so base, so meanly spirited, as to 

1 Probably, by Yorkshire is meant the extreme north of England — Durham, Cum- 
berland, and Westmoreland. At this time (1704), it is highly probable, that De Foe 
had never been in Yorkshire, and knew nothing about it, but from books, written at 
all periods before his time ; his wages estimates, too, belong, probably, to an age or 
period antecedent by a century to the date given. This certainly is the case in his 
tour through England, written twenty years after this period ; many events in which 
are taken, without acknowledgment, from Thoresby's History of Leeds y and there 
recorded only as a state of things which had existed in history, but not as the visible 
object for the eye of a passing tourist . 



234 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

beg an alms for God's sake ! Truly, the scandal lies on our charity; 
and people have such a notion in England of being pitiful and 
charitable, that they encourage vagrants, and, by mistaken zeal, do 
more harm than good. 

" This is a large scene, and much might be said upon it ; I shall 
abridge it as much as possible. 

" The poverty of England does not lie among the craving beggars, 
but among poor families, where the children are numerous, and 
where death or sickness has deprived them of the labour of the 
father. These are the houses that the sons and daughters of charity, 
if they would order it well, should seek out and relieve. An alms 
ill directed, may be charity to the particular person, but becomes 
an injury to the publick, and no charity to the nation. As for the 
craving poor, I am persuaded I do them no wrong when I say, that 
if they were incorporated, they would be the richest society in the 
nation ; and the reason why so many pretend to want work is, that 
they can live so well with the pretence of wanting work, they would 
be mad to leave it and work in earnest; and I affirm of my own 
knowledge, when I have wanted a man for labouring work, and 
offered 95. a week to strolling fellows at my door, they have fre- 
quently told me to my face, they could get more a-begging ; and I 
once set a lusty fellow in the stocks for making the experiment." 

The paper extends to some further pages, on relieving tramps or 
sturdy beggars, and the injustice done to honest poverty, and the 
nation at large, by the pernicious practice ; for the begging trade 
affords a less return upon the capital invested than any other, the 
operative consuming the whole product of his labour, and nothing 
left for the return on the capital advanced. 

De Foe remarks on parish or county or national workshops for 
the employment of beggars or felons at the public expense, as most 
injurious to the community, and only tending to disarrange the 
labour market, by taxing the public for the disarrangement. He 
says, that " every session since the restoration of Charles II., has 
produced a bill for supplying the poor with work in workhouses, and 
tampering with the natural supply of labour in the market." This 
was vmtten in 1704; and since that time, up to 1858, how many 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 235 

of these injurious schemes have been inflicted upon the working 
classes; for all the injury falls unmitigated upon them, while the 
credit of the mischief is given to some half-dozen enthusiasts, who 
wish to set the world all right by a little prating in Parliament, a 
little newspaper bribing, and a little pamphleteering : a process cheap 
in the gross for obtaining the credit of their being the most feeling 
men in the community, for the dear starving poor. 

In order to illustrate this tampering with labour, and this tam- 
pering with philanthropy, suppose, in a small confined community, 
a few philanthropists set up for regulating the evils of their neigh- 
bours, and extirpating poverty. This little club of benevolents de- 
termine to make every tramp, beggar, or thief, into a shoemaker, 
what would the result be in the shoe trade ; how would wages run 
after such a supply of labour? Well, after a while, poor shoemakers 
would be starving; so an act of Parliament must be obtained to re- 
lieve the oppressed shoemakers ; and how their little village Exeter 
Hall would ring with depreciated remuneration for the poor shoe- 
makers ; and their hard taskmasters, the master shoemakers ! 1 Go- 
vernment tampering with trades or education is always injurious to 
the community ; for the attempt to get rid of crime, idleness, and 
poverty, by public taxation, is absurd; and injurious to the honest, 
industrious, and rich. A drunken man has six ragged children; is 
the industrious, sober, thrifty man, with six children, to be fined for 
the support of the drunken family ? and are twelve children to be 
educated, the sober man being taxed for the support of the whole? 

This question of workhouses was well understood by De Foe ; and, 
as it is a most important one, I have quoted freely from him ; for 
Daniel De Foe, as a political economist, is a new character in which 
to study our hero ; and, of course, justice must be done to him in 
it : my only regret being, that I could not follow him through his 
valuable remarks on government employing labour out of the taxes. 

1 What outcries have we not had about the remuneration paid in London to shirt- 
makers ! How comes this ? I know not. Is there some disease in the natural supply 
or demand in the market of labour here ? Who are the shirtmakers of London ; how 
are they produced ; how comes supply so far to exceed demand ? Is it plain sewing 
in charity schools which is employed to the bringing down the wages of all poor 

If so, what do charity schools effect here ? 



236 LIFE OP DE FOE. 

In the early part of 1705, De Foe again returns to the attack 
upon Sir Humphrey Mackworth's bill for philanthropizing the poor 
by deceiving and robbing the rich — a bill which passed through the 
Commons with great applause; but was rejected at once by the 
House of Lords. Here, again, the Lords save their country once 
more from the ignorant tampering of the most corrupt, worthless 
Parliament that ever was returned by English freeholders ; and the 
bench of bishops too were the main instruments of this salvation of 
their country — bishops appointed by William III. 

De Foe manfully defends his course of action in his Review, 
lamenting that he " must be forced to erect his own opinion, and 
advance his private judgment, against the capitals of the nation; 
and must stand the test of public censure for his arrogance, only 
from the magnitude of his opposers, not at all from their reasons 
or the force of their judgments. Be it so. Truth and demonstra- 
tion are the weapons ; and I am only to be answered by the irre- 
fragable arguments of reason. 

" When these are against me, I submit and pay homage to truth 
in the mouth of the meanest ; but with these, I am a match for the 
greatest, and boldly take upon me to say, that bill is an undigested 
chaos, a mass of inconsistency, big with monsters of amphibious 
generation, brooding needless and fatal errors, and numberless irre- 
parable mischiefs, absolutely destructive of trade, ruinous to the 
poor, tending to the confusion of our home trade, stopping the cir- 
culation of our manufactures, and increasing both the number and 
misery of the poor." — Review, vol. ii. pp. 37, 38. Bravo ! Daniel 
De Foe ; political economist on workhouses for the poor ! 

Having given long and dry, and perhaps uninteresting quotations 
on political economy — on a very important subject, one which, even 
down to our day, has not had due consideration afforded to it; namely, 
the whining, canting, tampering with labour and capital, in order 
to gain a character for a benevolence which is hypocritical and dis- 
honest — dishonest to the poor themselves, who are to be whined or 
canted into a Muggletonian character of recipients of charity; in- 
stead of being an independent, free, sturdy descendant race of a 
free, erect, Saxon ancestry. I do not want to flatter the poor ; all 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 237 

I say is, 18s. a week, and no favour; neither do I wish to say one 
word on poverty, remembering that u Dust thou art, and unto dust 
shalt thou return." But I do not want to see a people legislated 
into poverty ; and then see poverty smothered down into broken- 
souled dependency by the soothing balm of Gilead — red herrings 
and soup-tickets ; legislated starvation healed by a plaster of phi- 
lanthropy and cant. I maintain that one half of the philanthropy 
of the present day is a fabric of cant, built upon a concrete ground- 
work of dishonesty — proceeding in a great measure from placemen 
and pensioners sitting as legislators in the Houses of Parliament. 

There is not a street fight can be kicked up in the habitable globe, 
but the poor inhabitant of Great Britain has to find the stakes from 
his breadloaf. This is true, and will remain true, till placemen and 
pensioners are removed from the House of Commons. Only look 
at the Government Privy Council system of education, which is a 
trap; a conspiracy extracted from the pressure of exorbitant taxation. 
Church and dissent are two parties in the state, upon which exor- 
bitant taxation presses with unequal violence ; the church party, 
from social habits, feelings, or principles, feeling the greater amount 
of the pressure ; therefore a counteracting influence — a borrowing 
power from the national exchequer, for the benefit of the church 
side of the contest, to make the combatants equal. This scheme is 
a conspiracy to ruin Protestant dissenters with their own money ; 
it is only the old game of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin and the 
Protestants of France, played over again ; it is a conspiracy, and no 
canting meetings at Exeter Hall can blot out the word : conspiracy 
by a profession of philanthropy. 

But, to return to De Foe and his tract on finding work out of 
the public funds, national or parochial, for thieves, tramps, scoun- 
drels, and sturdy beggars : I say again, rejoicingly, Bravo ! Daniel 
De Foe, the political economist, and precursor of Franklin, Adam 
Smith, Hume, Bicardo, Colonel Thompson ; and poor Elliott, who 
never felt so happy in his work of feeding the poor with their own 
bread, as when the scamps and street lads were shouting after him 
as a fool broken loose. Poor Elliott ! who always worked on Dean 
Swift's principle, of judging of the quality of a philosopher or a 



238 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

statesman by the number of boobies, fools, or scoundrels, following 
in his rear. De Foe ! political economist ! But mind, when I 
write the term political economist, I do not mean that De Foe, who 
lived sixty years before the author of the Wealth of Nations, was 
thoroughly master of the science of political economy. No ! neither 
was Adam Smith, the honoured father of the science, embodied as 
a science, distinct and separate from all other sciences — the science 
of political economy ; although he lived sixty years after De Foe, the 
latter being born a.d. 1662. 

As for this very treatise which I admire so much, as being so 
far in advance of the year 1704, in which it was written — this 
Giving Alms no Charity — one half of it, the latter half, which I 
have studiously kept back on account of the errors in it, in my 
quotation, is incorrect ; for it is all based upon the false principle 
of giving employment to the poor as the first moving acting influ- 
ence or power for attaining national prosperity ; whereas the first 
power is high return of profit on capital ; for the surplus above the 
cost of production ; the surplus of profit being the future bread of 
the operative — his future store of wage-fund. Be prepared with 
your wage-fund before you start your operative at his work; have 
a heavy supply of that fund, and the workman will be prosperous, 
as dividing a larger share ; but diminish that store, and the share 
of each operative will be less. 

Towards the close of 1704 the Duke of Marlborough returned to 
England a victorious general, when all national parties vied with 
each other in showering blessings and honours upon the distinguished 
hero, and amongst the crowd Daniel De Foe contributed his mite 
of well-earned praise, in a congratulatory poem entitled the Double 
Welcome to the Duke of Marlborough. 

The muse that by your victory 's inspired, 
First sung those conquests all the world admir'd, 
Now sings the triumphs of your native land, 
When you our hearts as well as troops command ; 
Adapted thus to sacred truth and fame, 
She never sung but they were both her theme. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 239 

Stranger to penegyrick and to praise, 

It must be some sublime, must her just fancy raise. 

To truth and merit sue was always true, 

And never praised but William, sir, and you. 

Bravo, Daniel ! you never praised in verse but two men in your 
life : William III. of glorious memory, the best of kings and truest 
of patriots ; and trie victorious Duke of Marlborough. 

The Duke of Marlborough was one great prop to the throne ; for 
he was a great man as a man, independent of his generalship ; and 
I feel glad at De Foe's selecting him, and him only, from the great 
mob standing around. 

You ''re welcome, sir, to this unthankful shore, 
Where men of worth were never owned before. 
A steady glory ever has entailed 
The grin of envy ; envy never failed 
To act the high refined extreme of hell ; 
How William found it, blush, my muse, to tell. 
Shall any foreign bard desire to know 
Why Britain can so few like William show ? 
Say, angry poet, tell 'em 'tis because 
Ungrateful devils grudge their due applause. 

Although the British nation greatly rejoiced at the victories of 
the Duke of Marlborough, yet the Tory High-Church party were 
more afflicted with disappointment than with any other feeling, on 
account of the influence afforded by the Duke to Lord Godolphin 
and others about the court, for the removal of the Earl of Notting- 
ham and his High-Church coadjutors from the ministry; for after 
this removal the greatest hatred was manifested towards the Duke of 
Marlborough, his victories, and all belonging to him ; his very vic- 
tories over the French at Blenheim were, indeed, represented to be 
endangering the Church of England ; for the French party was the 
Church-of-England party ; and the Duke of Marlborough conquer- 
ing the French, was conquering Toryism, Churchism, and Pretend- 
erism, at home ; since these were really one in spirit during the 
whole twelve years of the reign of Queen Anne. To such a pitch 



240 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

was church-in- danger carried during the whole reign of this weak- 
minded woman ; for De Foe in his Review, vol. ii. page 233, says — 

" I have been told of a certain worthy tacker, who, being a can- 
didate for Parliament, caused a flag to be carried before him, with 
this device — a church leaning, and ready to fall ; and himself under 
it, holding it up. When he had been at the place, and was chosen 
again, he comes back with another flag which he had reserved in 
petto ; and then the church was represented standing upright, and 
his worship walking before it. This was a wrong device ; for, were 
the church really falling, I must needs say, few of these gentlemen 
would stand under to hold her up, for fear they should be crushed 
in the fall. But these are all said to be defenders of the church : 
I must confess I think not. Woe be to the church if Jacobites, 
nonjurors, and tackers must hold her up ! 

" We have seen these hot men out [of Parliament] a great while, 
some of them a year, some two ; and pray, gentlemen, tell us, what 
has the church lost by their being turned out ? 

" Among the many enemies of the church, whose being put into 
other people's stead, in the royal favour, gives a sad prospect to 
the church, and who have been suggested to bring the Church of 
England into danger, one of the principal is, his Grace the Duke of 
Marlborough. 

" Why, really, gentlemen, these are some of the remarkable in- 
stances in which Nature gallops faster than the understanding can 
follow. As these people are angry at being thought fools, they 
ought not to expect that the people of England will be pleased to 
be called fools, and made fools too at the same time. 

" I hear people say that the Duke of Marlborough is pulling down 
the Church of England ; why, our common people would be ready 
to laugh at these gentlemen. How ! Beat the French to ruin the 
church ! How can this be ? What ! are the French the supporters 
of the church ? Is the Duke of Bavaria a friend to the church ? 
Really, gentlemen, you must have most scoundrel thoughts of the 
people's senses that read your papers, to think of prevailing upon 
them to believe this stuff. 

" I confess there are some incoherences in the matter suitable in 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 241 

their kind to this ; and, upon examination, would appear so absurd 
as this ; such as charging the Bishops, the Queen, the Lords, and 
the like, with pulling down the church ; but nothing could be so 
strangely adapted to the genius of common banter, to the capacity 
of every mean understanding. 

" That the Duke of Marlborough should attack the French lines ; 
should push their armies to all extremities; baulk their councils, 
take their generals ; pursue them over rivers, towns, fortifications, 
and all the precautions of the highest art of war, and — all this to 
pull down the church ! 

" Well, gentlemen, if this be to put the church in danger, here 's 
strange doings in the world ; for here the church keeps hplyday ; 
the Queen makes processions to St. Paul's ; the clergy sing anthems ; 
and all the people give thanks on these occasions ; and blessed, 
congratulated, rewarded, even by the House of Commons. What, 
gentlemen ! all this for joining in confederacy with a gang of cour- 
tiers to pull down the church ? 

" Pray, gentlemen, go back again ; let the Duke of Marlborough 
be called home, and a churchman be put in his room, that may let 
the French beat him for propagation of the faith ; and run away for 
the safety of the church. 

" These are the inconsistencies of the party, this is their memorial 
argument, their High- Church consequences. I cannot but think it 
a duty of every Englishman, as much as in him lies, to inform the 
people, who are thus imposed upon, and to let them see a little, the 
way our church is to be secured by those people, that cry out so 
much of her present distress. 

"Next to my Lord Treasurer [Godolphin], no man is worse in 
their esteem, or has more of their ill language, than the Duke of 
Marlborough, that is fighting for the safety of England, against 
Popery, tyranny, universal monarchy, and all the complication of 
devils that has pushed so far at the destruction of Europe's liberty ; 
and has drove all the Protestant powers of Christendom to an abso- 
lute necessity of leaguing together for their common security. This 
is the same cause for which the late glorious King William so often 
fought, so long struggled, and so bravely hazarded his life ; and now 

16 



242 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

an English duke, fired with the same zeal, and filled with the same 
desire of the general prosperity, pushes at our safety and establish- 
ment, runs down all before him. This is the man that is branded 
by this unhappy party with the scandal of ruining and destroying 
the Church of England. 

" And this nation, among all the blessings attending the glorious 
victory obtained by the Duke of Marlborough, has this, as none of 
the least — that the vile notion raised by a yet more vile party, that 
this hero, or this ministry, with whom he acts in concert, are not, 
nor can be, instrumental to injure the church ; all their fighting, 
conquering, and struggling, both abroad and at home, being a plain 
and just indication of their true zeal for the Church of England, and 
the prosperity of the Protestant religion in general. 

1 ' May the church never want such guardians ; and let the 
mal- contented party bring out their seditious memorials every 
day, till they expose themselves more and more, become justly 
odious to all the world, and particularly contemptible to all good 
men." 

After the removal of the Earl of Nottingham, Sir E. Seymour, 1 
and others from the ministry in 1704, nothing could be done in 
this kingdom, but the High-Church party industriously gave out, 
that it was done for the destruction of the Church of England ; and 
even the victory of Blenheim, obtained August 2, 1704, scarcely 
received the usual compliment of the thanks of the House of Com- 
mons; because the general, the Duke of Marlborough, would not 
sacrifice every principle and every feeling to the grand ruling passion 
of poor Queen Anne : the fostering of the vested rights and exclu- 
sive privileges of an endowed priesthood, the fraternity of the Church 

1 Who was Speaker in the House of Commons in the reign of Charles II. j he was 
always suspected of being in the French interest ; and was impeached by the Commons 
in consequence. He opposed King William at the Revolution ; but that king en- 
deavoured to bring him over by making him a privy councillor and lord of the 
Treasury ; but all to no purpose : he had to be discarded, when he became the head of 
the opposition in the Commons. On the death of William, this man was made comp- 
troller of the household, and a privy councillor. This man, and such as he, would 
have Sacheverelled this kingdom into open rebellion again and again, had it not been 
for a power — a national power — superior in strength to the throne itself j and that 
power may be found enrolled in the Kit-cat Club. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 243 

of England ; nourished by royal favour, for a purpose — the succes- 
sion of the Pretender to the throne of these realms ; to the exclusion 
of the house of Hanover. 

We will give another instance of the dishonesty of the Church- 
and-Pretender spirit which occurred at this time, on the building 
of the Haymarket Theatre, which was opened May 3, 1705. This 
undertaking came out under the patronage of the Kit-cat Club, an 
association of noblemen, forty-eight in number, whose names are 
worthy of being handed down to posterity ; not as a literary club, 
that founded the Augustan age of English literature ; no, nor as the 
builders of the Haymarket Theatre ; no — but as that power which 
William III. placed around the throne, and which in power was 
superior to the throne ; for the throne never could shake off this 
power during the Queen's reign ; a power of aristocracy which could 
override the French or Pretender interest, then mad and rampant 
in the House of Commons — mad to that degree, that De Eoe advo- 
cated the abrogation of the Commons' House, root and branch, as a 
nuisance planted on British soil, for the serving of French interests, 
by the sacrifice of British interests. All this occurred in the unfor- 
tunate reign of Anne, when British nobility was a pattern for the 
world, and at a time when rottenness in the bone, with idiocy of 
the mind, was the disease of the stockjobbing, priest-ridden, 
Stuart-worshipping House of Commons — the byword of civilized 
Europe. 

These high-minded noblemen, the Kit-cat Club, shall go through 
the muster-call, to show what William III. left to Britain for the 
protection of the throne, and the institutions of the country: — 
William Cavendish, first Duke of Devonshire; John Churchill, 
Duke of Marlborough; Thomas Wharton, Marquis of Wharton; 
Charles Howard, Earl of Carlisle ; Richard Boyle, Earl of Burling- 
ton; Richard Lumley, Earl of Scarborough; Francis Godolphin, 
Earl of Godolphin ; Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset; Charles 
Lenox, Duke of Richmond ; John Montagu, Duke of Montagu ; 
John Sommers, Baron of Evesham ; Charles Cornwallis, Lord Corn- 
wallis ; with others, patriots and wits. 

These men built a theatre ; they founded the Augustan age of 

16* 



244 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

English literature ; they saved the crown through a very weak reign, 
and kept poor Anne's church from falling on the gravestones in 
the churchyard ; they kept the institutions of this nation together 
for twelve years, and saved poor Anne from an ignominious flight 
to the hospital of the exiled Stuarts at St. Germains. I have men- 
tioned these gentlemen again and again, but never had the oppor- 
tunity of bringing them together till now, when slandered as the 
destroyers of the church, by building a theatre. Not that Leslie 
cared anything about the church-destroying building. No; he 
cared not if five hundred theatres had been built, provided Dan 
Burgess's Mercers' Hall Chapel, in Cheapside, had been closed by 
the building of them. It was not the theatre, but its being a Whig 
theatre, that affected him ; and its being called the Queen's Theatre, 
threw all the spires out of the perpendicular, and endangered the 
gravestones. The Dan Burgess of Charles Leslie, the nonjuring 
pamphleteer, was Dr. Burgess, the Presbyterian minister; the 
most persecuted man in his day, not excepting Dr. Burnet, the 
Bishop of Salisbury, or Daniel De Foe, our political economist. I 
should have felt delighted if De Foe had been traduced, maligned, 
and slandered in this forty-first number of the Rehearsal. I should 
have liked De Foe to have been office-bearer for this one day, to 
the illustrious, high-minded collection, the Kit-cat Club, along 
with Dr. Daniel Burgess; for a better collection of patriots, pa- 
trician or plebeian, could not have been made in this Isle of Great 
Britain. 

William III. was the real designer of the Augustan age of Britain, 
although Queen Anne had always had the credit of it. William III. 
created, or brought together and kept together, these accomplished 
noblemen ; and they formed the Augustan age of English literature 
by their taste, their writings, and their patronage. 

Charles Leslie is much offended at this theatre being a Whig- 
theatre — the production of " the Kit-cat Club, which is now grown 
famous and notorious all over the kingdom ; and they have built a 
temple for their Dagon, the new playhouse in the Hay Market. The 
foundation was laid with great solemnity by a noble babe of grace. 
And over or under the foundation-stone is a plate of silver, on which 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 245 

is engraven Kit-cat on the one side, and little Whig on the other. 
This is in futuram rei memoriam, that after- ages may know by 
what worthy hands, and for what good ends, this stately fabrick was 
erected. And there was such zeal shewn, and all purses open to 
carry on this work, that it was almost as soon finished as begun, 
while Paul's- work is become a proverb ; and the greatest part of our 
communicants cannot come to our churches for want of room ; and 
there is no zeal or money to be found to build others ; while Dan 
Burgess and other dissenters can rear cathedrals with as much 
expedition as that in the Hay Market." 

I need not quote Leslie's Rehearsal for information further, for 
one of De Foe's Reviews is full of it, vol. ii. page 101 :— 

" We have lately erected, at the cost and charges of several pious, 
charitably disposed Christians, a noble and magnificent fabrick near 
the Hay Market, in the liberties of Westminster. The name of the 
thing (for by its outside it is not to be distinguished from a French 
church or a hall, or a meeting-house, or any such usual public build- 
ing) is a theatre, or, in English, a playhouse. The use and design 
of this, is for the encouragement of wit, the entertainment of the 
ladies, &c, for the representations, or misrepresentations, of vice; 
for the encouragement of virtue ; and, in short, to contribute to the 
exceeding reformation of our manners. 

" The dimensions of this noble pile, its beauty, its stupendous 
height, the ornament and magnificence of its building, are de- 
monstrations of the great zeal of our nobility and gentry, to 
the encouragement of learning, and the suppressing of vice and 
immorality. 

" What, though the founders of this structure may complain of 
deficient funds for the completing the building, and that some gen- 
tlemen's names stand to the roll whose money has not yet increased 
the bank ; and that there may be some ground for the following 
notes : — 

" The fabrick 's finished, and the builder's part 
Has shewn the reformation of his art ; 
Bless'd with success, thus have their first essays 
Reform'' 'd their buildings, not reformed their plays. 



246 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

The donor's bounty may be well designed, 

But who can guess the model of the mind ? 

Never was charity so ill employed, 

Vice so discouraged, virtue so destroyed ; 

Never foundation so abruptly laid, 

So much subscribed, and yet so little paid. 

On public faith the fabrick they begin, 

And vice itself is run in debt to sin. 

"After all, the author has nothing to say to the crime of a play; 
nor am I so narrow in my opinion as to think it an unlawful action, 
either in the player's acting or the person's seeing a play, if it could 
be abstracted from all the unhappy circumstances that attend our 
theatres. Nor am I so angry at the gentlemen concerned in our 
theatres, either as poets or actors : I know 'tis the taste of the town 
that will have everything mix'd with something vicious ; or will not 
be pleased with it. 'D — n a sober dog; a serious play is like a 
game at nothing/ and away they go ; so that, in short, to reform 
the stage would be, not to build it up, but to pull it down ; and if 
nothing but representations of virtue, and decrying vice, should be 
the dull subject, the wit would be lost, and the labour too, and all 
the players and poets would be starved. But, gentlemen and ladies, 
if you would have a reformation in the playhouse, you must reform 
your taste of wit : and let the poet see you can relish a play, though 
there be neither bawdy nor blasphemy in it. 

" In short, the errors of the stage lie all in the auditory ; the 
actors and the poets are their humble servants, and, being good 
judges of what will please, are forced to write and act with all the 
aggravations and excesses possible, that they may not be undone 
and ruined, lose both their reputation and their employments. 

" So easy a thing would it be to reform the stage ; so soon 
would a mode of virtue ruin all the manufacture of vice in the 
nation." 

A prologue was spoken on the occasion of the opening, written 
by Dr. Garth, a man who was, according to the unscrupulous, 
scurrilous Leslie, a professed atheist, and chaplain of the Kit-cat 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 247 

Club. The following verses are selected as a fair specimen of the 

whole: — 

More sure presages from these walls we find 

By Beauty founded, and by Wit designed ; 

In the good age of ghostly ignorance, 

How did cathedrals rise, and zeal advance ! 

The merry monks said orisons at ease, 

Large were their meals, and light their penances ; 

Pardon for sins was purchased with estates, 

And none but rogues in rags died reprobates. 

But now that pious pageantry 's no more, 

And stages thrive, as churches did before, 

Your own magnificence you here survey, 

Majestic columns stand where dunghills lay, 

And cars triumphant rise from carts of hay. 

Swains here are taught to hope, and nymphs to fear ; 

And big Almanza's fight, mock-Blenheim's here. 

Descending goddesses adorn our scenes, 

And quit their bright abodes for gilt machines. 

We have gone fully into the church-is -falling spirit of the times, 
to show the absurdity of the cry — a cry raised by a bribed French 
interest, in order to bring in the Pretender upon the shoulders of a 
besotted populace, influenced by an interested priesthood ; who in- 
tended to crush dissent, that they and vested interests in rates and 
tithes might be hand-and-glove through all time ; whatever might 
become of the trick through the boundless expanse of eternity. 

Huzza, boys ! — throw up your hats for religion and the Pretender, 
and down with the Dutch Presbyterians, and psalm-anthem-singing 
Hogan-mogans ! l That was the trick ; but — but — it could not be 
played. No ; the talent was all on the other side, backed by the 
new titles of the monastic estates ; enjoyed by parties who had 
power, and who exercised it : it was too late ! The church might 
fall upon the gravestones ; but no Pretender — no re-establishment 
of the Roman Catholic religion within these realms. Some of these 
great patriots may have descendants, who would not scruple to palm 
a church lie for a church truth upon a confiding, credulous British 

1 i.e. Hugger-muggers — Dutchmen. 



248 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

public ; but who would tremble in their shoes at the very idea of 
the re-establishment of Popery ; lest the cabbage-stalls of Covent 
Garden Market might be made to give way to the rebuilding of 
chapel, cells, dormitory, and cloisters, to some religious order of 
nuns, or sisters of mercy ; under the important appellation of the 
Convent. No ! legislative lying is not so dangerous as the re- 
establishment of Popery — for them. 

But to our dissenting playhouse and Dan Burgess, the Presby- 
terian minister, or his deacon, Daniel De Foe ; for De Foe wrote a 
prologue as well as Dr. Garth, and here it is : — 

Here whores in hogsties vilely blended lay, 

Just as in boxes at our lewder play ; 

The stables have been cleansed, the jakes made clear, 

Herculean labours ne'er will purge us here. 

Some call this metamorphosis a jest, 

And say, " We 're but a dunghill still at best : 

The nastiness of all your common shores, 

Being far less nauseous than our beaux and wliores." 

Bless us ! (said I) what monstrous beast 's a man ! 

Whom rules can never guide, nor art make clean ; 

View but our stately pile, the columns stand 

Like some great council-chamber of the land ; 

When strangers view the beauty and the state, 

As they pass by, they ask — " What church is that ?" 

Thinking a nation as devout as we, 

Ne'er build such domes but to some deity. 

But when the salt assembly once they view, 

What gods they worship, how blaspheme the true ; 

How Vice's champions, uncontrolled within, 

Boll in the very excrements of sin ; 

The horrid emblems so exact appear, 

That hell 's an ass to what 's transacted here. 

Having done with church in danger in the battle-field of Blen- 
heim, .and having viewed the tottering fabric in the Presbyterian 
conventicle, the Hay market Theatre ; we will turn to the colonies, 
and see whether graves and gravestones lie unencumbered with 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 249 

wreck of chancel, tower, or steeple ; for at home there never was a 
church but the tower was on the leads of the chancel ; or the steeple 
had fallen, and very nearly killed the parson in the rectory. 

Charles II. had laid claim to the so-called deserved colony of 
Carolina, and had granted a patent of occupation on March 24, 
1663, to eight noblemen and gentlemen, " who, being excited with 
a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the gospel"— the 
gospel ! — ten per cent, dividend, and a bonus ! This is hanging 
Indian Sepoys by thousands, thanking the Lord for throwing his 
enlightening face on heathen lands, and doubling the subscription 
to the Bible Society ! We may rob the Sepoys of their fatherland ; 
hang them for resisting ; but, never let us insult Heaven by 
charging the Lord of it with imbecility or folly ; for God is not a 
fool, to be mocked by our cant ; for the hangman's rope and cheap 
editions look very like insult and mockery. Well, this converting- 
the-heathen scheme took with the government ; it, I suppose, being, 
along with the grantees, " excited by a laudable and pious zeal for 
the propagation of the gospel among a barbarous people, who had 
no knowledge of God/' 

The religious persecution against the dissenters at home soon 
stocked this new colony with these oppressed religionists, perse- 
cuted from Britain by test acts, and constant threats of occasional- 
conformity bills. In process of time, as the colony advanced in 
numbers and prosperity, the Church of England laid claim to all the 
honours and emoluments in the colony, through test acts, and other 
legal instruments, made to keep all places of profit or honour in the 
hands of the select few ; so that church and dissent, steeple-house 
and conventicle, threatened its destruction in 1705 : the resident 
proprietors being dissenters for the most part ; but the proprietors 
in England being Church-of-England-men, backed by the poor, 
narrow government of Queen Anne. 

During this agitation, De Foe published a pamphlet on the sub- 
ject, entitled Party Tyranny; or, an Occasional Bill in Miniature, 
as now practised in Carolina ; humbly offered to the Consideration of 
both Houses of Parliament, 1705. 

The constitution of Carolina was drawn up by John Locke, and, 



250 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

as might have been expected, was worthy of its author; but time, 
prosperity, and innovation, had superseded the original spirit of the 
constitution : Church and Queen being as much a party -triumphant 
cry in connection with the colony, as in the mother country. 

In 1705, De Foe also wrote or published Advice to all Parties: 
a tract which had been written in 1703, and seized, with his other 
papers, by the vigilant High-Church champion, the Earl of Not- 
tingham, the Queen's secretary of state; but returned with all his 
other voluminous papers, perhaps in mistake. In this tract De Foe 
writes — 

" Popery and slavery will never go down with this nation. Popery 
is so formidable a thing, that the very name of it would set the 
whole nation in an uproar. Those who do not understand it, hate 
it by tradition ; and I believe there are a hundred thousand plain 
country fellows in England, who would spend their blood against 
Popery, that do not know whether it be a man or a horse/' 

In the early part of this year, De Foe collected his remaining 
tracts into a second volume, the first volume being printed in 1703. 
This will account for the title-pages of volumes one and two being 
so dissimilar, as to make a buyer of the work believe that he had 
purchased odd volumes. The same occurs, but with a more marked 
difference, in the Complete Tradesman, and in other works of his, 
from the same cause : the volumes being printed at separate times, 
with long intervening periods of time. 

The reason De Foe gives for collecting his tracts into one volume 
is, " the scandalous liberty of the press, which no man more than 
myself covets to see rectified, is such that all manner of property 
seems prostrated to the avarice of some people ; and if it goes on, 
even reading itself will in time grow intolerable. No author is now 
capable of preserving the purity of his style — no, nor the natural 
product of his thought to posterity ; since, after the first edition of 
his work has shown itself, and perhaps sinks into a few hands, 
piratic printers or hackney abridgers fill the world : the first with 
spurious and incorrect copies; and the latter with imperfect and 
absurd representations, both in fact, style, and design. 'Tis in vain 
to exclaim at the villany of these practices, while no law is left to 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 251 

punish them. To let it go on thus, will in time discourage all 
manner of learning." 

On March 26th in this year, De Foe published the Consolidator ; 
or, Memoirs of sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon. 

This work of 360 pages would, in all probability, be written when 
De Foe was a prisoner in Newgate during the Queen's pleasure ; for 
such was the sentence passed upon him in 1703, for writing the 
Shortest Way with the Dissenters. This book is a valuable history 
of the circumlocution principles of passive obedience and non- 
resistance in theory, with active resistance in practice, by the clergy 
of the Established Church of England during the reign of James II. 
The book is valuable, but encumbered with the disguise of being 
written in the moon, and in moon-like terms and language ; but, 
although the moon is a long way off, yet with the assistance of De 
Foe's moon -vocabulary we may stumble out the sense into pretty 
intelligible English. Take the following as a sample of this lunar 
book : — 

" These great masters of distinction (the clergy of the Church of 
England) have learnt to distinguish between active swearing and 
passive swearing ; between de-facto loyalty and de-jure loyalty ; and 
by this decent acquirement they obtained the art of reconciling 
swearing allegiance without loyalty, and loyalty without swearing ; 
so that native and original loyalty may be preserved pure and unin- 
terrupted, in spite of all subsequent oaths to prevailing usurpations. 
Many are the mysteries, and vast the advantages, of this new- 
invented method; mental reservations, inuendoes, and double 
meanings, are toys to this; for they may be provided for in the 
little terms of an oath ; but no provision can be made against this ; 
for these men, after they have taken the oath, make no scruple to 
declare they only swear to be quiet, as long as they can make no 
disturbance ; that they are left at liberty still to espouse the interest 
and cause of their former prince, they nicely distinguish between 
obedience and submission; and tell you a slave taken into captivity, 
though he swears to live peaceably, does not thereby renounce his 
allegiance to his natural prince, nor abridge himself of a right to 
attempt his own liberty, if ever opportunity present. 



252 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

" And this method of circumstantiating matters of fact into truth 
or falsehood, suited to the occasion, is found admirably useful to the 
solving the most difficult phenomena of state ; for by this art the 
Church of England made persecution be against their principles at 
one time, and reducible to practice at another. They made taking 
up arms, and calling in a foreign power to depose their prince, con- 
sistent with non-resistance and passive obedience ; nay, they went 
further, they distinguished between a dissenter's taking arms and a 
Church-of-England man ; and fairly proved this to be rebellion, and 
that to be non-resistance. 

"Nay, and which exceeded all the power of human art in the 
highest degree of attainment that ever it arrived to, on our side the 
moon ; they turned the tables so dexterously as to argument, upon 
one sort of dissenters called Presbyterians, that, though they 
repented of the war they had raised in former times, and protested 
against the violence offered their prince ; and, after another party 
had, in .spite of them, beheaded him, took arms against the other 
party, and never left contriving their ruin, till they had brought in 
his son, and set him upon the throne again." 

" Thus the Presbyterians were called the murderers of the father, 
though they restored the son; and all the testimonials of their 
sufferings and protests signified nothing; for this method of dis- 
tinguishing has that powerful charm in it, that all those trifles we 
call proofs and demonstration were of no use in this case. Custom 
brought the story up to a truth, and in an instant all the dissenters 
were hooked in under the general name of Presbyterians; at the 
same time to hook all parties in the crime. Now, as it happened, 
at last these Church-of-England gentlemen found it necessary to do 
the same thing themselves, viz., to lay aside their loyalty, depose, 
fight against, shoot bullets at, and throw bombs at their King, till 
they frightened him away, and sent him abroad to beg his bread. 
The dissenters began to take heart, and tell them now they ought 
to be friends with them, and tell them no more of rebellion and 
disloyalty ; nay, they carried it so far as to challenge them to bring 
their loyalty to the test, and compare Dissenting loyalty and Church- 
of-England loyalty together, and see who had raised more wars, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 253 

taken up arms oftenest, or appeared in most rebellions against their 
kings; nay, who had killed most kings, the Dissenters or the 
Church -of-England men; for there having been then newly fought 
a great battle (Boyne) between the Church- of-En gland men under 
their new Prince, and the armies of foreign succours under their 
old King, in which their old King was beaten, and forced to fly a 
second time ; the Dissenters told them that every bullet they shot 
at the battle (of the Boyne) was as much a murdering their King as 
cutting off the head with a hatchet was a killing his father." 

I might go on, page after page, to good purpose, on the parties, 
principles, and deceptions of the reign of James II., but space will 
not allow ; suffice to say, that the people, the masses, the gentry, 
with the clergy, were in such a state of subserviency and general 
want of self-relying principle, that James II. might have substituted 
the Roman Catholic religion in England for the Protestant, if he 
had only taken due caution. This was De Foe's fixed opinion ; he 
lived at the time, and devoted his life to studies of this nature ; and 
was fully competent to give an opinion of what was passing around 
him, in the religious or political world. 

Bishop Burnet fully bears out De Foe<s view of the utter pros- 
tration of all vitality of political independency in the first year of 
James II. On the calling together his first Parliament, every art 
was practised upon the independency of the elector in the borough 
constituencies; and scores of boroughs were disfranchised by the 
mere King's will or order, and the powers of voting restricted to the 
self- elected corporations of those boroughs ; and these corporations, 
too, weeded out as to objectionable or independent burgesses, and 
the gentry of their neighbourhoods substituted for them ; so that 
the King had a complete packed House of Commons, to his heart's 
content ; with the nice sprinkling of appearance of opposition or 
independency of forty members. This House was more corrupt 
than any previous House of Commons that ever existed ; for they 
even voted more money than the King required. With such tools 
a skilful workman could have accomplished any oppression, with 
due prudence ; but James being forced forward by his Italian Queen 
and her confessors, and by his priests, made an attack upon the en- 



254 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

dowments of the Church of England, when the drum-ecclesiastic 
was struck, when the church was in danger ; and then away flew this 
pretended or lick-the-dust-for -bread subserviency; for this loyalty 
was of this class. Yes; a lick-the-dust class for bread ! It flew as 
soon as self-interest found itself in danger of being superseded by 
a competing or adverse sect of religionists. Our endowments in 
danger ! Governments have great powers for mischief, if they only 
exercise them with due caution, select safe tools, and mind what 
they are about ; but princes and rulers are so apt to make a short 
cut at the desired object, that they excite alarm by their haste, and 
rouse the principle of resistance, almost lulled to sleep by kind 
nursing, flattery, and gentle usage. Education of the people was 
James II.'s grand project; but he was only a poor schoolmaster; 
he was too hasty and passionate ; for he went upon the butcher- 
boy-and-shepherd-dog principle, which does not suit the English 
national temper. I have heard of the little lad telling his master 
that he could do anything but knuckle ; but knuckle he could not ; 
and so it is with men in England — anything but knuckle. Now, 
James II. tried to make the people of England knuckle, and he 
failed; for knuckle they couldn't. Coercion could not drive Pres- 
byterians, Independents, or Hogan-mogans, into a Roman Catholic 
chapel. No ; British blood would not knuckle I 

Ignatius Loyola tried this game in Italy, but by educating the 
children into state-priesthood principles; for he began with the 
cradle. Louis XIV. tried this scheme with some success. And 
Catherine de Medici carried this condition of education into 
state-priesthood religion, from Florence to France, as her marriage 
settlement. 

Educating the children out of the religion of their fathers may 
be done ; but it requires a very steady hand to play the game. The 
game may be learnt ; but is it worth learning ? No ; never ! but to 
make some tricky expert hand, knave or fool, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, as the reward of his dexterity in throwing the balls. The 
whole trick is a game; and the archbishopric of Canterbury, the 
stakes to be played for. 

James II. surrendered his judgment to the influence of priests, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 255 

and it was his ruin. As King of England, he could have no interest 
in the matter. Suppose all his subjects had wished to have been 
Primitive Methodists, what could that have been to him, so long as 
they were honest Methodists, and honest subjects? It is a mistake 
to suppose that a sovereign can have the least interest in closing a 
Methodist chapel. A priest may rave, stickle, lament, and bluster ; 
yes, and be paid for raving, for stickling, for lamenting, and for 
blustering. It is his speculation ; and, if he be rewarded by a rich 
bishopric, it is a paying speculation. But, pay or not — the Derby 
stake, or a butcher's cart — no matter — an ambitious parson is not 
a king ; and God's Almighty name be praised — yes ! be praised for 
civil liberty and free religion. Down with all tampering with the 
education of the people; which is only a pretence for priestly tyranny. 
Suppose a neglected, mortgaged, bankrupt village — a village standing 
as a byword in its neighbourhood for total neglect and depravity ; 
suppose, I say, this neglected spot of earth could have a little unpre- 
tending building erected on it, called by what name you like — 
Ranter, Christian, Culamite, or Muggletonian — for the disciples 
were first called Christians at Antioch — yes ! ranters there ! Yes ! 
they were the ranters there ; for there was neither dean nor chapter, 
nor lord bishop, with all the circumstance of place, pride, and im- 
portance; no pluralities under £400 per annum each, then; no 
shuffling honest parishioners out of their rights, to pamper a priest- 
hood, then ; no shuffling the cards of law, in the Lords or in the 
Commons ! No, all poverty and meanness ; and, consequently, none 
of the quips or quirks of dishonest or one-sided legislation, then. 
They were first called Christians at Antioch, in derision ; for they 
had no endowments. 

AY ell; but to return to our own little Anabaptist conventicle 
erected upon the village -green, for the gathering together all the 
outside Hogan-mogan-conventicle-mongers of the district. The 
gospel is preached there, on the sabbath and on the week-day, to 
the poacher, and idle man-of-all-work in the hours of darkness, the 
pigeon-stealer, the midnight burglar, or highway-lounger of the 
night : what is the consequence ? A reclaiming of the whole fra- 
ternity ; and this, too, outside the churchyard consecrated croft. 



256 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



The whole party never enter a church, and never intend to enter 
one; the drunkard becomes a sober man, who spends his time in 
the bosom of his family instead of the pheasant preserve, the ale- 
house, the beer- shop, or the king's highway ; he becomes a reformed 
character, a comfort instead of a nuisance and a curse to his neigh- 
bourhood and his family j he becomes a respectable honest member 
of society ; but shut up his conventicle — tell this man he shall no 
longer be Hogan-mogan, but he shall be church, what will be the 
result ? Ask the wife, the children, the neighbours. John shall be 
church, for the parson says so ; but John won't be church, for he 
says so. Is he church? — No ! John can't knuckle — John won't be 
done ; he '11 return to the alehouse first — he never was done by a 
church parson; and he never will. He can't consait church; he 
never could — and he won't go ! What is to be done? In England 
there are thousands of families which the Church of England never 
did touch, and never will — never ! The church has £6,000,000 per 
annum for the religious instruction of the people ; and you may, by 
bribing the members, as Harley did when in power, by warming 
their insides with victuals; and nattering the vanity of their outsides, 
through my Lord Chamberlain's Ticket Office, for the mother and 
daughters, and that puppy-lad who wears hair on his upper lip, un- 
attached ! — to look either like fool or swindler. I say, by nattering 
all these at royal drawing-rooms and royal concert-rooms,Parliament 
might be induced to grant another £6,000,000 per annum for state 
instruction ; but they never will shut up the conventicle. 

Suppose every child in England was taught to read and write, 
from the public taxes ; what would be the result upon the taxpayer, 
but a diminution of the power of employing the body, by the amount 
taken for cultivating the mind. There would be an increased pressure 
upon the vitality of the nation, with a decreased power of living, and 
an increased power of perception of the difficulty. Would this empty 
the conventicle? Would it stop the mouth of the Muggletonian 
preacher? Would the Dutch -Presbyterian shepherd drop his an- 
them ? Stickling parson might reap his deanery or his bishopric — 
school inspector might reap his rectory — school monitor might be 
elevated to the post of supervisor ; but injustice would remain : 



LIFE OP DE FOE. 257 

injustice, — millions would be paid to schoolmasters for teaching; 
good books might be suppressed ; and slang, under the patronage 
of the Harley of the day, might be promulgated by all his 
bribed talent. Some half-dozen writers and thinkers might be 
ruined in their reputations, by all this bribed talent for ribaldry 
and slang; but would the conventicle be laughed down by the 
church ? No ! No ! The Anabaptist conventicled hut upon the 
green cries " No !" and points at the two £400 per annum, as the 
wages of the pluralist. Kings fancy that they can legislate a nation 
into leading-strings, by bamboozling them. James I. tried it, and 
organized dissent. His son Charles tried it, and that dissent, orga- 
nized by his father, cut off his head. His sons, Charles and James, 
worked in Spain as soldiers of fortune for years, under Turenne, for 
bread, instead of being seated upon a throne ; and this said James, 
afterwards trying the bamboozling scheme, failed and ran, to live a 
pauper on the bounty of France. Queen Anne — poor weak woman ! 
— tried the same, and would have had to run like her father, but 
for William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, and others ; who had 
been left as a legacy of trustees, by the good King William III. 
of glorious memory, who prevented the flight. Poor George III. 
tried this ; and, poor mumbling old man ! a pretty mess he made of 
it ; as the loss of the United States of America, and the vast in- 
crease of the national debt, fully testify. 

Let princes beware how they tamper with the education of the 
people, for the people of England ivill not knuckle. Let rulers take 
off the tax on paper, and all taxes on knowledge ; and let them leave 
the rest ; for the people of England have a consait, and a will of 
their own ; and, what is more — they never did, and they never will, 
knuckle either to kings or parsons. 

The Consolidator professes to be a machine something like a 
modern railway locomotive engine —filled with fire and steam, but 
fitted with wings instead of wheels ; and the feathers of these wings 
were made from the members of the House of Commons, some for 
ornament, others for use; each member constituting one feather. 
This Consolidator book records passing events in England ; but, for 
the safety of the writer, England is called the Moon ; and in other 

17 



258 LIFE OF I)E FOE. 

respects the book carries such an amount of caution in it, as to show 
that speaking or writing out fully on parliamentary parties, events, 
or contests, was not safe for the writer at the time he wrote. This 
great caution induces me to suppose that the work was written when 
Daniel De Foe was a prisoner in Newgate, in 1704, and confined 
there during the Queen's pleasure; for such was his punishment 
for writing the Shortest Way with the Dissenters ; for the fine of 
200 marks imposed upon a man who had nothing, was placing 
him prisoner for life, if the Queen or her ministers had desired 
it. This Consolidator book was printed in 1705; and as it con- 
tains 360 pages, and much political information of those times, and 
the times preceding by some years, as the Kentish petitioners' im- 
prisonment, which occurred in the reign of William III. ; his own 
incarceration in Newgate, for writing the Shortest Way ivith the 
Dissenters, in the reign of Anne, in 1703 ; and, what I like to find, 
this prosecution for writing, connected with the break-up of the 
ministry of the Earl of Nottingham. I have brought these two 
events together more than once, as two parts of one complete whole ; 
and I am glad to find De Foe brings them also together here — his 
prosecution and confinement in Newgate, and the break-up of Lord 
Nottingham's position as secretary of state. All these considerations 
taken together, induce me to believe that the work occupied con- 
siderable time in getting up, and was, besides, the product of great 
pains and industry; and it is, moreover, a work worthy the reputation 
of Daniel De Foe as a writer. As a work of fiction it is curious, as 
being the model upon which Swift moulded his Gulliver's Travels ; 
and also, as showing very forcibly his own views on many subjects 
and parties, by his contrasts and comparisons made between the 
inhabitants of this Earth and those of the Moon ; as in the case of 
the dissenters, who are represented in the Moon as never thinking 
without first using a thinking-machine, called there a cogitator ; 
while the English dissenters never used such a machine in England ; 
but, on the contrary, made great use of a machine called an elevator. 
Here we have a glance at John Howe and his deacons playing at 
long-spoon and custard on lord mayor's day, through a prostitution 
of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, to foster pride. The dis- 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 259 

senters in 1705 did not stand high in the opinion of Daniel De 
Foe ; for they possessed at the time more of the principle of raising 
themselves than searching after the trnth. This applies emphati- 
cally, if not altogether, to the Presbyterian dissenters of that day. 

It wonld almost appear that a flight to the Moon was through 
China ; for our voyager is landed in the grand library of the Chi- 
nese empire, at Tonquin ; to which library the meanest Chinese had 
admittance, to learn the laws of his country; for there were no fools 
there : for the emperors always observe the laws by observing the 
pacta conventa of the government ; which pacta conventa show 
natural right to be superior to temporal power ; while we in Europe 
prove from pacta conventa, that kings and emperors come down 
from heaven with crowns on their heads; and all their subjects are 
born with saddles on their backs. 

This book on the sovereignty of the people was thought safest on 
the shelf of the royal library, unread, and, of course, unquoted ; lest 
our tract- writers in England on passive obedience, divine right, &c. 
— as Lesley, Sacheverell, and others — should be blasphemed by the 
mob, and brought into contempt of the people; so far as to be 
questioned for the blood of Algernon Sidney and Argyle. 

De Foe considers the doctrine of passive obedience among states- 
men to be like the Copernican system of the earth's motion among 
philosophers ; which, though contrary to knowledge, and incapable 
of demonstration, yet is adhered to in general, because by it they 
can solve the dark phenomena in nature better than they could 
without it ; the dark obscurity of the doctrine being useful in the 
dark obscure of philosophy, for purposes of delusion. Modern 
statesmen approve of passive obedience ; not that it admits either 
a rational defence, or a demonstration ; but because by it they can 
better explain, as well as defend, all coercion in cases of invasion of 
natural rights than they could without it. 

In this library our voyager found a tract on Wind, which out- 
does even the sacred text, which makes us suppose it could not be 
written for the Jews ; for this book tells whence it cometh and 
whither it goeth. This book turns all our philosophers into fools ; 
and their transactions a parcel of empty stuff, even down to the 

17* 



260 LTFE OF DE FOE. 

experiments of the Royal Society of this country. In this book 
yon have the receipt for making glasses of hogs' eyes for seeing the 
wind, its regular and irregular motions, compositions, and quan- 
tities ; and by their algebra they can cast up its duration, violence, 
and extent. These calculators can state the revolutions of storms, 
and how many shall happen in any period of time, with as much 
precision and truth as could be done by any philosopher in 
England. 

This wonderful book, although in the royal library at Tonquin, 
was written not by a native of this world, but by an author born in 
the Moon j but brought to China by our voyager on one of his 
return passages, and deposited there with other volumes : one, on 
Tides, being written two thousand years before the deluge. 

One work on the Brain shows how that organ is divided into two 
large warehouses, of which Conscience has one, and the Devil the 
other. The first is very seldom opened, but has a till in which all 
the follies and crimes of life are dropped ; but the locks are very 
rusty, for they are never or seldom opened, but on extraordinary 
occasions, as sickness, afflictions, gaols, casualties, and deaths. But 
as for the Devil's warehouse, he has always two constant warehouse- 
keepers — Pride and Conceit ; and these are always at the door, 
showing their wares, and exposing the pretended virtues and ac- 
complishments of the man, by way of ostentation. In this former 
work on the Brain we have a long essay on Memory ; and the most 
wonderful part is, the power of wilful forgetfulness. It is fully 
proved that there is no such power in nature; and that all pre- 
tenders to it are impostors, who put a banter upon the world ; for 
it is impossible for a man to oblige himself to forget a thing ; since 
he that can remember to forget, and at the same time forget to 
remember, possesses an art more than the Devil. 

The composition of a wit takes a trifling place in the pages of 
this lunar essay, showing how effluxions, vapours, deliriums, giddi- 
ness of the brain, and looseness of the tongue, form the principal 
ingredients of the character. The humours of a wit expose him to 
all kinds of disasters, as loss of property; for Waller, Denham, 
Dryden, and others, were obliged to condemn their races to lunacy 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 261 

and blockheadism, only to prevent the fatal destruction of their 
families by entailing wit upon their posterity. 

Wit contains beauism, dogmatic ality, whimsisication, impudensity, 
and other fopperosities, which, issuing from the brain, descend into 
all the faculties, and branch themselves by infinite varieties into all 
the actions of life. These beggar the head, the tail, the purse, and 
the whole man, till he becomes as poor and despicable as negative 
nature can leave him ; abandoned by sense, manners, modesty, and 
— what's worse — money; having nothing left but poetry, dies in 
a ditch, or a garret, a-la-mode de Tom Browne (Doctor Browne), 
uttering rhymes and nonsense to the last moment. 

These poor creatures (wits) are not to be reproached, since Nature 
has formed them to act coxcombs by organic agencies, and com- 
pelled them, by the necessity of the laws of reproduction, to be what 
they are— wits. 

The discovery is wonderful, and edifying, and such as our side of 
the world could not produce ; but Wit and Folly have been made 
out by a lunar philosopher to be near akin. 

It is here stated that Addison would not write the poem called 
the Campaign, for the minister lord, without having J8200 per 
annum settled upon him ; " since 'tis known they have but one 
author in the nation who writes for them for nothing, and he is 
labouring very hard to obtain the title of blockhead, and not be 
paid for it." Who was this author — for we have him repeatedly 
alluded to, as working for nothing but ingratitude and abuse? 
His name was Daniel De Foe. 

" Denny had to write twenty-two plays to show he was a cox- 
comb ; but the Chinese bookshelf would have given the information 
without this book- writing ; and Dryden, too, might have told his 
fate, having his genius slung upon a swivel, to turn round as fast as 
the times; for he wrote elegies on Oliver Cromwell and Charles II., 
with all the coherence imaginable ; he wrote Religio Laid, and the 
Hind and Panther ; and yet remained the same man : to change 
his religion, change his coat, change his master, but yet — never 
change his nature. 

"How useful a thing it would be for most sorts of our people, 



262 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

especially statesmen, parliament-men, convocation-men, philoso- 
phers, physicians, quacks, mountebanks, stockjobbers, and all the 
mob of the nation's civil or ecclesiastical bone-setters together, with 
some men of the law, some of the sword, and all of the pen : I say, 
how useful and improving a thing it must be to them, to take a 
journey up to the world in the Moon ; but, above all, how much 
more beneficial it would be to them that stayed behind \ n 

De Foe expresses " great desire to go up to the world in the Moon, 
having heard of such extraordinary knowledge to be obtained there ; 
since, in the pursuit of knowledge, wiser men than he had taken as 
unwarrantable flights, and gone a great deal higher than the Moon, 
into the strange abyss of dark phenomena, which they neither could 
make other people understand, or even understand themselves; 
witness Malbranch, Locke, Hobbes, Boyle, Norris, Asgil, Coward, 
and Dean Swift's Tale of a Tub." 

This great lunar searcher into Nature has left wonderful disco- 
veries behind him, in various engines and contrivances, to go from 
China to the Moon. 

" As for Bishop Wilkins's mechanical motions, or the artificial 
wings of the learned Spaniard, they are fools to this gentleman. 
As for his telescopes, too, they are of such power that both moon 
and planets will afford the time of day to this earth by their dials, 
just as plainly as, from London, a clock-face might be read at 
Windsor Castle ; and his speaking-trumpet, too, unfinished when 
he died, would have done wonders in conveying earthly sounds to 
the moon, and bringing their acquired knowledge, with their daily 
improvements in science, back in return."" 

De Foe had the notion that a presentation of one of these tele- 
scopes to the Royal Society, might have raised its reputation for 
science to such a pitch, as to preserve the vitality of the reputation 
of that learned body for at least forty years; " and thus the repu- 
tation of the So-So's might be recovered in England." 

" In this philosopher's first voyage to the Moon, he found there, 
men, women, beasts, birds, fishes, and insects, of the same species 
as our own. The men no wiser, better, nor bigger than here ; the 
women no handsomer or honester than ours. There were knaves 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 263 

and honest men, honest women, and prostitutes, of all sorts, coun- 
tries, nations, and kindred, as on this side the skies ; and they were 
all flocking about him, to see the man who had come from their 
moon ; and one of their savans cultivated Daniel's acquaintance so 
far as to borrow his diary, journal, or note-book, from which to 
publish a few extracts for the information of his people." Poor 
fellow ! he was called before his betters for writing De-Foe pam- 
phlets in the Moon, and he was told, by the Sir Simon Har court, 
solicitor-general of the Moon, as poor Daniel had been told at the 
Old Bailey, by the same earthly individual, that they could not bear 
the reflections of "this damned satirical way of writing; and so 
they put the poor scribe, astrologer, almanac-man, or what he might 
be, into prison, ruined his family, and not only fined him ultra- 
contenementum, but exposed him in the high places of their capital 
city, for the mob to laugh at him for a fool. This erection was like 
our pillory, and was appointed for mean criminals — fellows who cheat 
and cozen people, forge writings, forswear themselves, and the like. 
But the people pitied the poor writer; and, instead of hooting at 
the victim of tyranny, only showed their sympathy with him by loud 
shouts of affection when he was taken down." 

Writing on lunar mechanics, De Foe says of the engine called a 
cogitator, that " had our unhappy monarch James II. been screwed 
up in a cogitator, he never would have trusted the English clergy 
when they preached up that non-resistance, which he must needs 
see they could never practise; for he would have reflected that it 
was against nature to expect they should stand still, and let him 
tread upon them ; that they should, whatever they had preached or 
pretended to, hold open their throats to have them be cut, and tie 
their own hands from resisting the Lord's anointed." 

" And the clergy, too — had they been screwed in this cogitator, 
they had never turned martyrs for their allegiance to the late King 
James II., only for the sake of having Dr. Sancroft, Archbishop of 
Canterbury, in their company." 

Our lunar traveller found one nation very wealthy, populous, 
potent, and terrible ; but generally at war with one of the greatest 
monarchs of that world ; and with any other monarchs, great or 



261 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

little, with whom a quarrel could be picked ; and when not at war 
abroad, always quarrelling with one another at home. They were 
all very religious, but not two of them could agree to worship God 
in the same manner : some being high-worship men, and some low ; 
but most of them screwed as to their principles in the elevator ; 
working, I suppose, on the principle of "Glory be to God — but well 
done I" 

Our voyager could not understand how a kingdom divided against 
itself could stand; or how a kingdom fighting with all the world 
could stand — running into debt to find employment for certain 
members of the community, who were brought up to the fighting 
trade, and who must be maintained in their calling. "But," said I, 
" if this people go on fighting and snarling at all the world, and one 
among another, in this manner, they will certainly be ruined and 
undone, either subdued by some more powerful neighbour, whilst 
one party will stand still and see the other's throat cut, though 
their own turn immediately follow j or else they will destroy one 
another." 

The danger here from foreign foes is not so great as would at first 
sight appear ; for no sooner does a foreign enemy appear, than they 
all fall in together as loving as brothers, and all turn their utmost 
energies to work to fight that common enemy ; no matter the cause 
of dispute, whether just or unjust — right or wrong — fight, fight, 
fight; and run into debt for materials with which to fight; and not 
one word heard about their religion, so long as the contest abroad 
lasts; but, only proclaim peace abroad, and you proclaim discord 
amongst brethren at home ; fighting done with, then keep up the 
spirit of contention about religion. Yes ; my religion is better than 
yours — mine is a pet religion, and enjoys the loaves and fishes ; we 
have the endowments; we have pluralities; we have the riches, 
and consequently the power ; while you are poor, poverty-stricken 
Muggletonians ; you don't use the elevator, we do; you are poor, 
scabbed Lazarus, and we are Dives. We use the elevator, and you 
make what use of the cogitator you like; give me the loaves and 
the fishes ! Bread *s the stuff ! 

The real difference in religion is not so great, but all might kneel 
side by side, and worship their common Creator according to the 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 265 

light that was in them ; but this would not do for the ruling power ; 
for if there were no religion to quarrel, spar, or fight about, there 
might be other causes of quarrel arise, which might be more incon- 
venient to the ruling powers. The court politicians of the Moon, 
like certain court politicians nearer home, always liked plenty of 
religious strife to work upon; for it kept the people fully and harm- 
lessly employed, and prevented " their more narrow inspection into 
depredations and encroachments on their liberties, which was always 
making on them by the court." 

Whatever the court might do, there was naturally in the breed of 
these people a contentious spirit, produced by the very nature of 
their existence as a people; they were a breed sprung from the 
gloomy, foreboding, suspicious malignants of all the nations of the 
earth : a sort of what I might call blowers-through-the-nose breed 
of men — I ; m-as-good-as-you class of mortal beings ! 

What a strange thing that people should be so blind to their own 
interests as to allow the court to play at battledoor and shuttlecock 
with them as churchmen and dissenters ! It is thoroughly de- 
plorable ; but so it was in the Moon, where the court could jolt the 
people's heads together over trifles ; and so rule and overreach them 
when divided. All this proceeds from a constitutional pride, which 
despises the cogitator, but worships the elevator. 

"Pride cometh before destruction, and a haughty spirit before 
a fall," has been a maxim both of earth and moon for a hundred 
generations, and will continue, I fear, through all time, as the main 
instrument of courtly oppressors, for the destruction of liberty. I 
may be wrong, but I believe that no instrument is so powerful in 
the hands of the rulers of a people, for the destruction of civil and 
religious liberty, as pride. Oh ! shade of Andrew Marvell ! — the 
man who could live four days upon a shoulder of mutton, and fear- 
lessly and publicly despise the offered patronage of Charles II. ! 

This work was attacked by Dr. Browne, Tutchin, and others, in 
sundry tracts, as the Moon-Calf; or, accurate Reflections on the 
Consolidator ; and A Journey to the World in the Moon ; and also in 
A Second and more strange Journey to the World in the Moon : 
" containing a comical Description of that remarkable Country, 
with the Character and Humours of the Inhabitants;" with the 



266 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

promise in an advertisement of " A Letter from the Man in the 
Moon to the Author of the True-Born Englishman, containing a 
variety of diverting news and comical intrigues relating to the pre- 
sent posture of affairs in Europe." All the above were pamphlets 
pirated from De Foe's Consolidator, wretchedly got up, curtailed, 
mutilated, and sold in the streets as the last work of Daniel De Foe, 
by the common street-hawkers, criers, or ballad- sellers. Such was 
De Foe's reputation as a writer ; and such was the compliment — a 
rough one no doubt, but yet a compliment — to the man, and his 
talent for writing. 

De Foe next wrote " The Experiment ; or, the Shorter Way with 
the Dissenters exemplified : being the Case of Mr. Abraham Gill, a 
Dissenting Minister in the Isle of Ely ; and a full Account of his 
being sent for a Soldier by Mr. Fern (an Ecclesiastical Justice of 
the Peace) and other Conspirators. To the Eternal Honour of the 
Temper and Moderation of High-Church Principles. Humbly dedi- 
cated to the Queen." 1705 : London. 

The subject of this pamphlet, Abraham Gill, was born at Riving- 
ton, in Lancashire, in 1665 ; and was partly educated by the dis- 
senters, but afterwards went to Brazennose College, Oxford, where 
he graduated B.A. ; from which place he went to Parham, the family 
residence of Lord Willoughby, as a tutor, where he remained two 
years ; and after that he took orders in the Church of England in 
1692. He was ordained to the curacy of Maney, near Wisbeach, 
where he remained two years, preaching twice each Sunday, contrary 
to the practice of the neighbourhood. In 1695 he went to Wilney, in 
the same county, a chapelry in the gift of the inhabitants, where he 
remained seven years, to the satisfaction of his flock. He soon 
became dissatisfied with the Liturgy, in certain of its parts, and 
presently in the whole of them. On this the rector of Up well, the 
mother church, Dr. Gregg, remonstrated, and threatened to place 
another curate at Wilney, to supersede Mr. Gill ; but, he showing 
the rector that this chapel was extra-parochial, so far as discipline 
went, the rector was satisfied, and, as a gentlemen, very properly 
desisted from giving any further trouble on the occasion. 

Some time after this, Dr. Gregg was succeeded in the rectory by 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 267 

Mr. Hugh James, a man fond of making something important of 
himself as an official in the parish ; and he attempted to remove 
Mr. Gill from his chapelry. By a series of persecutions he suc- 
ceeded, whereupon Mr. Gill retired into Lincolnshire, where perse- 
cuting malice followed him, and brought charges — fictitious ones 
though — which caused this poor man to be thrown into prison ; but 
released on the failure of the appearance of the prosecutors at the 
trial. This treatment excited such an interest among the people of 
his former chapelry in Upwell parish, where we have shown he re- 
sided seven years to the satisfaction of his flock, that many of them 
invited him to settle there again, but — as a dissenting minister. 
With this request he complied, and a chapel was legally licensed. 
Here his enemies closed upon him, and, by legal process of writs 
and legal fictions, committed him by writ of habeas corpus to Nor- 
wich gaol, on the serious charges of felony, trespass, contempt, and 
other crimes, which not being proved on the trial, he was of course 
discharged. 

Mr. Gill, returning to his people in Upwell parish, was threatened 
by James the rector, and his curate, Lateward, with a committal to 
prison again, if he preached in their parish. He did preach, and was 
arrested shortly afterwards for holding a conventicle, and was com- 
mitted to Wisbeach gaol for the offence. 

The quarter sessions passed over, and the assizes coming on, and 
he still in prison and untried, these two clergymen conspired with 
other justices to impress him as a soldier, before the assizes should 
come on. This was done, notwithstanding Gill's standing on his 
rights as a freeholder of Lancashire, and a freeman of Wigan. After 
enlistment, Gill was marched forty miles to Cambridge ; where he 
was arrested for debt and locked up in the gaol ; and, being locked 
up, he could not attend the muster roll among the soldiers ; when 
Fern the justice — the clerical justice — issued a warrant for his appre- 
hension as a deserter. By these several persecutions he was driven 
to seek the shelter of the law, when he moved for a writ of habeas 
corpus to discharge him from the enlistment ; and, a rule of court 
against the conspirators being granted, things were made up with 
his creditors ; and after seven weeks' imprisonment, he returned to 



268 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Wilney, where he found his poor wife and children in the greatest 
distress from destitution. 

Early in the summer of 1705, a pamphlet, entitled Advice to the 
Ladies, by the author of the True-Born Englishman, was cried about 
the streets by the news-hawkers, and, as usual, brought a ready 
sale; for anything would sell if sold as the latest production of 
Daniel De Foe, whose name was constantly stolen in this way, for 
the sale of worthless, nameless trash, which never could have obtained 
a sale but by this artificial forcing. De Foe had to advertise in his 
Review, that all this hawked trash was stolen, even if the work cried 
was his ; for he never employed street-hawkers to cry his own books; 
and that in future he should publish no book without his name being 
properly affixed to it. 

The next production from the fertile pen of De Foe was the Diet 
of Poland, 1705; in which William III. is named Sobieski; and 
most of the political characters of his reign, and that of his suc- 
cessor, are drawn to the life — the Earl of Halifax, Russell, and 
Somers, being especially and favourably portrayed ; and Notting- 
ham, Rochester, Seymour, Rooke, and others, are drawn by way of 
contrast, to show off his better portraits, his heroes of the national 
legacy left by William the Patrotic of glorious memory, to this 
country, to keep it from anarchy; and preserve his poor weak sister- 
in-law in her inheritance, in spite of herself. 

In this poem he reviews the opposition of the High-Church - 
Pretender-serving clergy, to the Occasional Bill, and their general 
bigotry and intolerance, where French interests could be served; 
for they were French and Pretender all over ; in short, they were 
anything but Dutch-Presbyterian, or Dan -Burgess-psalm- singing 
Muggletonian. 

When once the pulpit plague infects the land, 
And sermon-readers get the upper hand, 
The nation 's ruined — all the town 's undone, 
And tongue-pad evils through the vitals run : 
Beason submits its captivated head, 
And raging nonsense governs in its stead. 



CHAPTER V. 

At this time, De Foe was appointed by Harley, the secretary of 
state, to some important and secret mission on the continent of 
Europe ; but whether in France or Spain, is uncertain ; but cer- 
tainly in one of these countries ; for the service was a dangerous 
one, requiring some considerable Downing- Street modesty of face in 
passport, and credential papers ; as bulwarks against prying country 
justices, and jack-in-office officials of the landing-stage. On this 
business there is a letter extant in Birch's Manuscripts (No. 4291) 
in the British Museum ; and this letter is addressed by De Foe to 
Harley, the minister ; though De Foe's name is not appended to it, 
(F.) being the only signature. Harley, in this letter, is requested 
to address his answer to Mr. Christopher Hurt. The papers enclosed 
in the letter sent to Harley were expressly written for him, being 
observations on public opinion, on the affair of the Fleet (1705),- — ■ 
an unhappy subject; and the intelligence sent to the minister on 
public opinion is much below the excitement on the subject. What 
was it? He assures the minister that he has "no personal design" 
as to Sir George Rooke, the admiral : " I neither know him, nor 
am concerned with him, or with any that does know him, directly 
or indirectly ; I have not the least disrespect for him, or any per- 
sonal prejudice, on any account whatever. I hope you will please 
to give full credit to me in this, otherwise it would be very rude and 
presuming to offer you the paper." He is preparing with joy to 
execute the minister's commands on Thursday next, and furnishing 
" myself with horses, &c." Furnishing himself with horses, fyc. : 
what does this mean? Scotland? A secret trip to Scotland, for 
Harley the tricky minister, and friend of the Queen ? Horses would 
not be required to ride to France. No ! nor yet to Spain. But 
for Scotland, if De Foe had to visit the Scottish lairds or chieftains 



270 LIFE OF DE FOE, 

in their strongholds or castles, he would require horses, et cetera; 
and the Diet of Poland, the satire on the English nobility, he wants 
returning, from Harley, to whom it had been lent, to carry into the 
country with him ; " and, as I am sure of its being very useful, I 
cannot but importune you to let me perfect it, and turn it abroad 
into the world." 

"The other papers which I purposed to furnish, I prefer, with your 
(Harley's) license, to send you per post." Why this per post ? 
Dare he not trust the bearer with the parcel ? No ; but per post, 
and signed, of course, as agreed upon beforehand, Christopher Hurt. 
Yes ! and, if you like, the parcel endorsed Notes on Scotch Intrigue. 
Yes ! — hand-and-glove : Harley and De Foe, Queen Anne, Doctor 
Sacheverell, the parsons, and — James VIIT. of our court at St. 
Germains. Is this possible? Harley was a back-stair adviser before 
he was minister of state ; he was related to Mrs. Mash am, the super- 
seder of the Duchess of Marlborough in the Queen's confidence ; he 
was tricky and unscrupulous, but the Queen's implicit confidential, 
and she — poor woman ! — was all church, steeple, and Pretender, at 
heart ; whatever she might appear to be under the shadow of the 
birchen rod of William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, and his 
coexecutors or guardians for Britain's commonwealth. Harley had 
the entire support of the French interest of the most corrupt House 
of Commons that England ever knew; and by these men was 
Harley created Speaker in three successive Parliaments ; and this 
command of the Commons, attained through the bowels of the House; 
for Harley was a great feeder of the members ; placed him secretary 
of state by Lord Godolphin and his Whig friends, in order to lead, 
feed, or drive that House, which they had neither the power, nor 
the inclination to purchase power (for it was a belly power), of lead- 
ing, or driving, or feeding. 

But, to return to De Foe's letter to the Queen's secretary of 
state. (C By post," he will send "some notes relating to the Parlia- 
ment, and a scheme of an office for secret intelligence, at home and 
abroad." Some detective-police business ; for secret intelligence — 
secret intelligence! — what could it be in 1705, at home and abroad? 
— when De Foe is buying horses for a journey to Scotland, and he, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 271 

when there, requiring Downing- Street modesty for protection; and 
he, too, to be addressed as " Mr. Christopher Hurt," per post ; for 
the service was a dangerous one, requiring protection from the 
meddling, prying gossip of Scotch whisky- drinking justices. In 
this letter De Foe writes on going abroad; but it must be con- 
sidered that a journey from London to the Highlands of Scotland 
in 1705, would be considered and termed going abroad; for the 
trip from one central English county to another would cause a man 
to make his will before he set out on his travels "to foreign 
parts." 

In reading De Foe's works, there is one circumstance which has 
excited my attention, and that is, the proud, commanding, sacred 
office of freeholder ; he was a freeholder in more than one county; 
and he was a freeman of London ; and this feeling in De Foe is 
really infectious, from the poetic association of ideas from other 
quarters; particularly Paul objecting to be punished before trial, 
on the ground of his being a freeman of Rome: the centurion 
stating, that with a great sum he had purchased the privilege or 
honour ; but Paul could reply triumphantly, ' ' but I was born free" 
— yes, the son of a freeman ! How he would stand erect on the 
declaration, before the honour-buying Roman officer ! 

I could almost wish that the old title of freeholder of England 
could have been preserved in all its illusive importance of antiquity; 
for the antiquity is illusory, as going no further back than the 
eighth and tenth of Henry VI., a.d. 1429-31 ; when £2 per annum 
was equal in value to £12 per annum in the reign of Queen Anne; 
and equal to £20 per annum in the early part of the reign of 
George III., when Sir William Blackstone, who wrote the Com- 
mentaries, remarked upon the fact. The keeping up the illusion of 
veneration for the forty-shilling freehold franchise is impossible, so 
mixed up as it is in practice with freemen, potwallopers, and scot- 
and-lot tax and rate payers, as borough voters ; and then the Duke 
of Buckingham's £50 tenant- at-will qualification, and the ten-pound 
per annum borough voter ; all these weaken or break up the charm 
of antiquity, illusory as it was. The old qualifications must follow 



272 LTFE OF DE FOE. 

the course of time, and give way to modern innovations of terms 
and usages. The antiquity of the English forty-shilling freeholder 
is illusory altogether ; for before the breaking-up of the monastic 
institutions by Henry VIII., the character of an ordinary English 
freeholder did not exist as a working party in the state. The act 
for creating a forty- shilling-freeholder qualification was not an ex- 
pansive move, but a restrictive one ; for previous to this restriction 
on the polling-day at elections, and scot-and-lot show of hands, the 
true old Gothic mode of election of knights and burgesses to serve 
in Parliaments, exercised no doubt for centuries through the whole 
of Germany and along the shores of the Baltic: I say, on the 
breaking-up of the old Gothic system of scot -arid-lot poll-day muster, 
when heads were counted, not acres — heads, not rent-rolls, the baron 
or barons, alone or in combination, who could carry most heads or 
polls to the hustings, would stand the best chance of the sheriff's 
verdict as to the show of hands, if each of those hands was well 
furnished with a good workable hedging-bill, hayfork, halberd, or 
even salmon-laister. Before the restrictive act of the forty-shilling 
freeholder — an act worthy of a Duke of Buckingham, the last of the 
Plantagenets ! — scot-and-lot show of hands was the turning-point 
of elections; and this, without the modern innovations of lawyers, 
poll-clerks, bill-stickers, or vote-corruptors by drink, influence of 
money, or intimidation by layman or parson. 

De Eoe was proud of the poetic feeling of respectability, of the 
antiquity of the order — his order — of freeholders ; but if De Foe 
had been an antiquary in these matters, he would have taken a 
more poetic flight than that of freeholder ; he must have gone to 
potwalloper or potboiler — house or hearth holder, taking his share, 
or scot and lot, in all incomings and outgoings, with the other inha- 
bitants of the borough. De Foe would have found that freeholder 
was a debasing, restricting device of interested rulers, for curtailing 
the liberties of the people; and he would have found, on a thorough 
investigation of the subject, that polling the people by a show of 
hands, will carry the point of antiquity, against the limitation of a 
land-tenure, by twenty centuries of Gothic usage. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 273 

The people must the person first create, 

And so the man became a magistrate. 

If any right directed in this choice, 

'Twas 'property obtained the general voice ; 

He had the justest title to command, 

Whose property prevail'd, and own'd the land; 

And so elective power commenced its reign, 

Where equal right of property began. 

The land divided, right to rule divides, 

And universal suffrage then provides ; 

The government lay in the general voice, 

They only had the power that had the choice. 

The undisputed right is plainly trac'd, 

Where Nature first had due possession plac'd ; 

Thus the collective body of a land, 

In right of property, had power contain'd, 

And all original right with them remain'd. 

They had the right, because the land 's their own, 

And property 's the basis of a throne : 

He that had all the land, had all the power, 

The property, the title must secure ; 

If he enjoy 'd in common with the rest, 

While right remains in common, title must. 

No man can claim a power of government, 

Where they that own the land will not consent. 

If any single man possess this land, 

And had the right, he must have the command ; 

If once he was but landlord of the isle, 

He must he king, because he own'd the soil ; 

No man his just succession could dispute ; 

He must both make the laws, and execute ; 

No laws could ever be on him impos'd, 

His claim of right the people's claim foreclosed ; 

And he that would not to his rule submit, 

Must quit the place, the place was all his right. 

When any thus by force or fraud obtain 

Power, not deputed right, that power 's in vain ; 

The people only true, first power could show, 

What only they enjoy'd, they only could bestow ; 

18 



274 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Their Maker taught them tyrants to prevent, 

And trusted them with their own government : 

No rules of management were e'er set down ; 

Nature was furnish' 'd to direct her own : 

The high unerring light of Providence, 

Left that to latent cause and consequence ; 

Hardly suspecting men would be such fools, 

To let their monarchs tread down Nature's rules ; 

No nat'ral fence of power supreme prepar'd, 

But left the crime to be its own reward ; 

Left men to be by their own follies curst, 

And he or they that will be ruin'd, must. 

He left them masters of themselves, and free, 

And trusted them with their own liberty ; 

For Providence, which never works by halves, 

Would ne'er ha' made mankind to make 'em slaves 

It quite destroys the meaning of the thing, 

To make a nation only for a king ; 

To make one life to forty thousand heads, 

And give one wretch the knife to cut the threads. 

Heaven gave them sense and reason to direct, 

The liberty he gave them to protect ; 

But as they have that liberty betray'd, 

And so defac'd the glorious thing he made ; 

They that are willing to be thus opprest, 

He lets them live unpitied, die unblest. 

Satire, give off the search of sovereign right ; 

'Tis found; the ancient secret's come to light ; 

Not in the flaming crimes of barbarous men, 

Who conquer nations merely to obtain 

The name of tyrant, and the power to reign : 

But ?vheresoe'er the property appears. 

The true regalia 's there — the kingdom 's theirs : 

Whether in all the people it remains, 

'Tis PROPERTY the right of power contains. 

Prom this just title men might fairly plead, 

Divine succession has a sacred head ; 

For right of property 's a sacred law ; 

Nature consents, and reason 's kept in awe. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 275 

All the just bonds of government in man, 

In this foundation principle began : 

Here only right hereditary lies, 

Succession 's born of this, and with it dies ; 

This is divine, and from the first of time, 

By this one title God himself lays claim. 

He rules the world, because the world 's his own, 

And by this claim first government begun ; 

By this the power descends ; by this 'tis just ; 

For were the lands our own, the kingdom must : 

Wherever Providence transplants a nation, 

The government goes always with possession. 

If governments have since swelVd up too high, 

Assum'd on life, and vanquished property; 

The error in the governors appears ; 

'T has gain'd on time, and swell'd its powers by years ; 

But all 's encroachment still, and usurpation, 

And time can never bless the alteration. 

Here, again, we have De Foe's partiality for his freehold quali- 
fication — a freeman of Britain, and that freedom based upon a pro- 
perty qualification, was almost a romantic passion with him, and 
constituted him poet as well as patriot; and I must confess the 
feeling becomes infectious; for I feel the romance of the feeling 
myself. 

We talk of reforming the House of Commons ; let us go back at 
once to the real origin of the House — the Gothic origin ; not the 
Norman importation of Danish tyranny under Norman banners : 
no ; but to the real usage of Gothic ancestry ; and we land at the 
Poll-booth of Universal Suffrage; for we can find no resting-place 
short of that ; that is antiquity — that is truth. Polling the people 
on the day of election; the scot-and-lot pot-wallopers of this 
nation ! 

The forty -shilling restriction bill of Henry VI. of 1429, was a 
plundering of the people of rights which they and their ancestors 
had exercised for centuries, many centuries, in Britain and Germany; 
and it was done on the principle that poor people had no right to 

18* 



276 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

exercise the same electoral privileges as rich people. Poverty, or 
humble circumstances of the people, was the plea or excuse for 
plundering them of their rights : this was the plea in 1429 ; and 
I regret to say it has been a plea for an act of injustice at a later 
period in church matters. 

Poverty in the people was the plea of Henry VI. for robbing them 
of their privileges ; and let poverty of the people be the plea used 
for a restitution of those privileges —the electoral privileges of voting 
for members to represent them in Parliament — privileges of twenty 
centuries of black-lettered respectability of antiquity. This must 
be done by claiming a right for manhood suffrage, household suffrage, 
or head-of- family suffrage, hearth- and-fire suffrage; or potwallop- 
ing, or pot-on-the-fire-boiling suffrage. 1 This is what the people 
must demand from Whigs and Tories ; and they must take no less. 
But the danger — what danger? Widen the electoral districts, if 
you fear danger; and shorten the duration of Parliaments, if you 
fear danger. Increased numbers, wider districts, with shorter time 
for M.P. to bargain away the rights of his constituents, for dinner 
or concert or drawing room, or levee tickets — tickets for Mr., Mrs., 
and five daughters ! 

But to return to De Foe, who was about to write a book on 
Bribery and Corruption — drunkenness, feastings, &c, at elections ; 
but when he entered upon his task "he found such an ocean of 
villany, such a depth of corruption, that it was endless to finish it, 
having no leisure to write large volumes in folio, upon so unpleasant 
a subject." — Review, vol.ii. p. 125. 

Coventry election was the main influence on him at this time for 
undertaking his task ; for five hundred or one thousand on a side 
might be seen fighting in the streets under the influence of the 
greatest fury and animosity. The. consequences were disastrous to 
the fighters, and injurious to the freedom of election ; for many of 

1 The election of members of Parliament by the potwalloping franchise is this : — 
That every inhabitant, whether housekeeper or lodger, who has a fire to dress his own 
victuals, shall, some short time before the election, bring out their pots, and place them 
upon fires made in the street, and there boil their victuals in the sight of their neigh- 
bours, and so establish their votes by accustomed usage. This used to take place at 
Taunton, in Somersetshire. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 277 

the voters were prevented coming to the poll through terror and 
club-law. From the account given, all appears to have been riot 
and disorder : those voted who liked, for there were no poll-books* 
consequently no power of checking the votes. De Foe wrote so 
freely on the bribery and treating practised by the interested, on 
the freeholders, that Tutchin and others took him to task for his 
free remarks ; and he was even threatened with parliamentary inter- 
ference, for meddling with what they chose to term the " Freedom 
of Election." 

The powers in being, Whig or Tory, who had the ambition to 
represent Coventry, and the spirit or ability to find the drink or 
sinews of war for the street fights which were to carry the election, 
might soon have been cured of their generosity by a three weeks' 
confinement in the common town gaol, on common gaol diet, with 
common gaol companions, and a few hours' exhibition on the 
pillory platform, a heavy pecuniary mulct for the county fund, and 
a brand of the letter B on the right cheek for bribery ; or a slitting 
of one or both ears, by way of ear- mark, with a pair of common 
shears or scissors. This is the protection for household suffrage. 
Well, but the committee — committee, what ? Paid for the drink ; 
paid for the intimidation ; paid for the corruption ; the bribery — 
what committee ? All the better ! — ten !« — hundred ! — or thousand ! 
— commit them all ! — all, by the blessing or the curse of God ! — 
all! — to the common gaol, for gaol diet, and gaol company, for 
three weeks ; and a three hours' each exhibition on the pillory plat- 
form ; and if pillory could not hold corrupters, lawyers, committee, 
or candidate, from the Reform, Crockford's, or the Carlton, single 
out the ringleaders in this bond of villany, strip him or them naked 
to the waist ; tie him or them, thus stripped, to the tail of a cart ; 
and by the assistance of that laced gentleman who walks at the 
head of the Grenadier Guards with his gold-headed walking-staff, 
let this culprit, this or these debasers of the people with drink, for 
the betrayal of their country, be placed by the half-dozen together, if 
you like, under the scourge of this gentleman, for a good exercising 
round Trafalgar Square, down the Strand, or up Cheapside ; or, if 
you like, down that open space in front of Buckingham Palace ; I 



278 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

care not where, so long as mid-day be the time ; for the protection 
of the rights and privileges of the potwallopers of England. 

How would a pillory stand in Palace Yard, or on the ground 
where the equestrian statue of George always proclaims United 
States of America, in Cockspur Street — how would a pillory for 
bribing candidates for parliamentary honours stand there? Or near 
the statue of Dr. Jenner in Trafalgar Square : Jenner looking after 
the preservation of the body, and our obelisk doing a little towards 
the mind ? Palace Yard, Westminster — would that do ? Or has 
Tyburn Gate more poetry about it, and more orthodox recollections 
of City institutions ? What can be said against Marble Arch being 
turned to the account of protecting the voters, by having a pillory 
erected upon the top of it, for parliamentary candidates convicted 
of treating, bribing, intimidating, or corrupting ? Would it not 
make a good pillory? Three hours on the top of it, and both ears 
slit, or cheek branded, would soon stop the beer-tap at elections. A 
good B, branded on the right cheek, would set off the black hair of 
the upper lip of either Whig or Tory. What a change for royalty ! 
What a deliverance to the captives of Buckingham Palace ! What 
with Whig stools, gold stools, and silver stools, and sticks too, 
and then the eternal nuisance to royalty of having to hold the 
farthing-dip of party subserviency to half the snobs in Europe — 
the Clarkies and Jubbies, and the Tonisies (once Thompson), with 
all their sons and all their daughters, because they claim some fifth 
cousinship of some flippant cowardly speculator in mouth — of a 
privy councillor. 

But to return from the capability of making a household suffrage, 
a free, honest, safe, thoughtful, patriotic constituency; I will return 
to the Coventry election, from which these homely and indignant 
thoughts have been elicited ; for it is stated, you could not trust 
the people with the franchise. Not trust the people ? Who says 
this ? — is it Whig or Tory ? Is it I, my brother, our two nephews, 
and a cousin, who, like the Three Tailors in Tooley Street, are to 
be — what ? — what, indeed ? — but the People of England ! 

Well, the fighting in the streets at Coventry election disgusted 
De Foe greatly, at the powers of the town supporting, conniving at, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 279 

or abetting the disorders of a turbulent, drunken rabble. This to 
him, making a tour of inspection, or persuasion to peace and mo- 
deration, of 1100 miles, through the west of England, before the 
elections came off, or at the time ; for he was at Coventry during 
the election, and saw the disorders of the town supported by the 
authorities. 

" In vain," says he, " we talk of peace ; if the mob must prevail 
over the magistracy, and the club oppress the h albert ; no more let 
us talk of the freedom of elections, if they must be carried by strength 
of hands, and not by number of voices ; but, if nothing but troops 
of horse will keep them quiet, they must thank themselves : the 
peace must be maintained." Yes ! Daniel, the peace must be main- 
tained, and household suffrage must be demanded, and maintained 
too ; till every drummer in the Scotch Fusileer Guards can flog a 
scoundrel down the Strand or Fleet Street, both to the tune of 
drum and bagpipe. 

On the subject of inculcating peace and union among the free- 
holders, De Foe takes much credit to himself — really, though not 
in words ; for his labours and troubles in this patriotic cause had 
been great and dangerous, as will be seen when we come to the 
treatment he received on this tour, not only from the magistrates, 
but also from my lord judge, in his charge to the grand jury at 
Exeter assizes ; of great danger to the peace of the realm, because 
— what ? Daniel De Foe was in the county, endangering the peace 
of the community ! — when, poor fellow, he had travelled 1100 miles 
on horseback, to inculcate peace and quietness among his dear, 
enfranchised, privileged class — a class romantically and poetically 
and enthusiastically dear to him — the English freeholders. 

" I have not the vanity to say I have had a hand in opening 
their eyes ; but I can tell you who has : even the tackers them- 
selves. That one action [tacking) has given the greatest blow to 
the party that ever was given ; but if a parliament of devils were to 
meet, he resolved to hold his face to it, let the consequence be what 
it might." 

The reader must understand, that the most corrupt, dishonest 
House of Commons had existed for some years previous to the 



280 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

summer of 1705, that England had ever known— so thoroughly de- 
moralized that De Foe, in his Review, advocated its entire abroga- 
tion. This I have said before ; but, as De Foe advocated the abro- 
gation of the Commons so fixedly, I may repeat the circumstance ; 
for it was so completely in the interest of James III., the exile of 
St. Germains, the High Church wedded to the Stuart-family inte- 
rest, in opposition to the house of Hanover ; and this, too, when 
Britain was blessed by the peerage legacy in the Lords, of William 
the Third of blessed memory — a legacy of patriotism, as I have said 
— a legacy of worth and truth, which kept the state together, for 
the whole tumble-down-church-tower-tottering reign of that poor, 
weak, though honest-minded woman, Queen Anne ; and kept her 
from an ignominious flight, an outcast, and a pauper to a foreign 
land. This I have said; and this I repeat — the House of Lords 
saved this kingdom from anarchy in the reign of Anne; and 
William III., the most patriotic of kings, made, adjusted, balanced, 
regulated, educated, or created that House of Lords. 

Well, to overcome the patriotism of the Lords, the rascaldom in 
the Commons, which was the scoundreldom of the French- Stuart 
interest, tried every means to overset the constitution of the state ; 
and as no fair legislation — no fair, honest bills — passed legitimately 
through the House by the majority of the votes of the Commons, 
money bills were resorted to ; and every kind of rascality was 
attempted to be passed through the Lords by its being tacked to a 
money bill, and by its being called a money bill ; whence the term 
tacker. 

I consider it a duty to De Foe, to quote at length from the Review, 
vol. ii. pp. 213-215, to show what he went through in his election 
tour : — 

" 'Twould even reflect upon the nation in general, if I should give 
the particulars of about twenty or thirty letters, most of which 
threaten my life ; and the world might think England coming into 
the mode of Italy. Indeed, we have seen too much of this method 
lately ; and justice seems to wait but a few weeks to take the sad 
example from a set of assassinators ; the murderers of the Scotch- 
man of Queenborough. To all the gentlemen who are so exceedingly 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 281 

angry at me for inviting them to peace, as to threaten my throat 
and the like, I make this serious request : Let them step to Maid- 
stone gaol, and there discourse a little with their brother murderers ; 
and, if their condition please them, let them follow their steps, if 
they can. 

" Indeed, gentlemen, the mean, despicable author of this paper is 
not worth your attempting his correction at the price : gaols, fetters, 
and gibbets, are odd melancholy things ; for a gentleman to dangle 
out of the world in a string, has something so ugly, so awkward, 
and so disagreeable in it, that you cannot think of it without some 
regret ; and then the reflection will be very harsh, that this was for 
killing a poor mortified author, one that the government had killed 
before." 

"I move about the world unguarded and unarmed; a little 
stick, not strong enough to correct a dog, supplies the place of 
Mr. Observator's (Tutchin's) great oaken towel ; a sword sometimes, 
perhaps, for decency ; but it is all harmless to a mere nothing ; can 
do no hurt anywhere, but just at the tip of it, called the point. 
And what 's that in the hand of a feeble author ? 

" And yet this bullying method is not the only treatment the 
author of this has to complain of. But, now he has had a storm of 
a more scandalous assassination, studying to ruin and embroil him ; 
crowds of sham actions, arrests ; sleeping debts in trade of seven- 
teen years' standing revived; debts put in suit after contracts and 
agreements under hand and seal ; and, which is worse, writs taken 
out for debts without the knowledge of the creditor, and some after 
the creditor has been paid; diligent solicitations of persons not 
inclined to sue, pressing them to give him trouble ; others offering 
to buy assignments of debts that they might be sued ; for others to 
turn setters and informers, to betray him into the hands of trouble ; 
collateral bonds sued where the securities have been resigned and 
accepted. 

" It would take up too much of the reader's time to trouble the 
world with the barbarous treatment shown a man just stripped 
naked by the government; 'tis like a man just ransomed from 
Algiers ; and, could I descend to particulars, would be too moving 



282 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

to be read. That this is all for the party ; that this is a pique at 
the subject as well as the author — speak, conscience, and tell us — 
why were none of these things done before?" 

At this time a report was industriously circulated that De Foe 
had been committed to Newgate, and that some of his friends had 
visited him there. 

" III tongues may do much; but I cannot but tell a certain gentle- 
man, who has offered £100 to have it so, that it will hardly be in 
his power to effect it. Pardon me, gentlemen, to inquire into the 
importance of this malice. A gaol would not check this paper. 
Perhaps, if you could bring it to pass, it might furnish me with 
leisure to perform it better." Bravo, De Foe ! a gaol would give 
you more time and retirement for writing ! Poor fellow ! he appeals 
to his enemies for compassion " on a man whose house has been 
burnt down or plundered. Will you have no compassion ? Neither 
will all this restrain his pen from writing; the truth depending 
upon it, that the author of that truth will, one time or other, own 
at least the work, if not the unworthy author. Suits at law, gaol, 
murther, assassinations, and all that malice can contrive, are, there- 
fore, without influence on me : I avoid the first, and I contemn the 
last ; the law, I trust, will protect me from the first, and I freely 
run the venture of the last." 

Review, vol. ii. p. 377 : — 

(( I have been a long journey into the country, chiefly, indeed, 
to be out of the reach of implacable and unreasonable men; 
which may serve for an answer to an impertinent vilifier, who, 
in print, had the impudence to demand what business I had in 
Devonshire ? 

" In all my perambulations, my constant endeavour, my whole 
discourse has been, like my writing, nothing but peace ; entreating 
and persuading all men, of what persuasion, and of what opinion 
soever, to lay aside their party prejudices, to bury former animo- 
sities, to remember they are all Protestants, all Englishmen, em- 
barked in the same vessel, environed and attacked by the same 
enemies ; that have no friends but one another to stand by them. 
I frankly appeal for the truth of this, to all the several towns and 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 283 

counties I have gone through, in near 1100 miles' riding. I have 
made no private gain, I have been raising no contributions, as another 
author has been busy about; I have dispersed no libels, as Mr. 

Justice S d says his informer alleged ; I have poisoned nobody's 

principles with anything but the infection of peace. I have, indeed, 
carried the Memorial with me, and on all occasions have shown it 
as a thing which carries its own evidence along with it ; and which, 
as I have often said, I think wants nothing to move the people of 
England to a suitable abhorrence of it, but to have it be seen. 

" I can testify that the principles discovered in that book have, 
in all places that I have shewn it in, opened the eyes of the people 
to an equal detestation of it, with the grand jury at the Old Bailey ; 
not a man but, without the help of spectacles, can see there, the 
Church of England dressed up like a Merry Andrew, to be laughed 
at, represented a la mode camisar, with the sword in her hand against 
her sovereign; and, in short, personated to principles which her 
soul abhors." He here goes on to say, "that his Memorial has 
done more to rouse the nation, to treat them as they deserve, than 
all the declarations the government could have put out, in vin- 
dication of their proceedings." He congratulates his readers that 
the eastern parts of the nation had that ' ' blessed article of peace 
and union much further advanced, and the people of all sorts, as 
well church as dissenter, living in more neighbourhood and society ; 
their clergy going on, hand-in-hand, in the heavenly work of doing 
good to souls ; and more like Christians and men, conversing with 
one another, than can be easily seen in these parts." 

He observes, that "the circulating through the length and breadth 
of the land pernicious pamphlets, wrangling papers, news-letters, 
Rehearsals, Observators, and Journals, so far as these papers en- 
courage discord and prevent peace, is most pernicious to the pro- 
sperity of the nation ; and that all men of sense, men of manners, 
men of piety, and men who have most to lose, are the men of peace ; 
for these listen to the invitations of the Queen, and are moved at 
the pressing persuasions of the royal eloquence; while the loose- 
headed, the drunken, the lewd, the dissolute, the immoral, the raven- 
ous, the haughty, the ignorant, the idle, the conceited, the dull, 



284 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

the dogmatick, and the bigot : these, added very unhappily to a too 
strong party of the inferior clergy, and gentry led away by the said 
clergy, are the maintainers of this unhappy temper ; these, and their 
rabble, whom they possess with notions ridiculous as themselves, 
are the firebrands of this nation, the enemies of its peace, and the 
destroyers of the church." 

" When this paper (the Review) comes among these, 'tis cursed 
without bell, book, and candle ; many times it is thrown into the 
fire, instead of its author, who, in the mean time, has such a cha- 
racter given him, and so suited to the temper of the givers, that 
truly, when I shewed myself in some places, and the people knew 
who it was, they began to look for the cloven-foot, the heads, and 
the horns, and all the demonstrations of devilism, which our com- 
mon people have learned from the painters, old women, and the 
like ; and I have had the honour, with small difficulty, of convincing 
some gentlemen, over a bottle of wine, that the author of the Review 
was really no monster, but a conversable, sociable creature." 

As peacemaking is such a dangerous thing, he advises his reader 
to beware, — 

" 1st. How he come near the town of Weymouth, in Dorsetshire, 
lest the worshipful Mr. Mayor cries out f A Presbyterian plot '; and, 
not daring to meddle with him personally, shall put all his hearsays, 
supposes, and drunken evidences together, and carry all the honest 
people he can find that converse with him to Dorchester, before a 
judge ; where accusing this peacemaker of a phanatick plot, and a 
bloody design, to persuade folks to a peaceable rebellion, he comes 
home with a flea in his ear, much about as wise as he went. 

" 2ndly. Let him have a special care how he comes to Exeter, 

particularly in time of the assizes, lest Mr. Alderman B , Mr. 

, and Mr. , should consult about sending an English free- 
holder and liveryman of the city of London for a soldier, according 
to the laudable example of Abraham Gill; but, finding their power 
weaker than their malice, should afterwards apply themselves to 
somebody in scarlet, informing that there are a great party of two 
men gone forth into the country, to raise rebellion against the High 
Church, by earnestly pressing all the well-meaning people of Eng- 



LIFE OF DE FOE, 



285 



land to adhere to the Queen's sober and healing admonitions and 
exhortations to peace and union. 

" 4thly. But, above all, let him have a care of Justice S , near 

Crediton ; for if ever he comes, with his peacemaking sedition, into 
his parts, an information in nubibus, with an oath, or without an 
oath, shall procure a warrant from his worship, to take him up, &c." 
All this occurred to De Foe when he was in Devonshire, on his 
errand of peace — an endeavour to sow peace and union amongst the 
freeholders at the time of the elections ; " for that the author [De 
Foe], with but one friend and his friend's servant, being in the 
western counties of England, on a journey about his lawful occa- 
sions, met with several unmanlike and unreasonable insults upon 
the road ; that at Weymouth, his letters, being delivered to a wrong 
person by mistake, were shown about the town. That a friend 
having wrote in one of them, as a piece of news, and too true, that 
a certain person had the impudence to say, in defence of the High- 
Churchmen, that the f Queen had broken her coronation oath/ and 
the like ; the wise mayor of the town examines all the people he 
found had conversed with him, and officiously carries them to Dor- 
chester, before the judges, the assizes being then at the place ; where 
the impertinence being discovered, the mayor was sent back, the 
gentlemen dismissed, and a wise magistrate thought it his duty to 
send up a letter to the court, to inform her Majesty's secretary of 
state what an officious booby was trusted with the government of 
that corporation." 

At Exeter, this story being magnified, certain parties — justices 
no doubt — procured the judge, in his charge to the grand jury, to 
direct them to apprehend certain seditious persons (De Foe and his 
friend), and to tell them, that a great many such were come into the 
country, to stir up the people and disturb the peace. " That the 
party would have the judge to mean this author (De Foe), reports 
were immediately spread, and industriously carried all over the 
county (Devonshire), that he had named the author of this in par- 
ticular, and that he should b€ apprehended wherever he should be 
found." 

"That the author being then at Bideford, in Devonshire, and 



286 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

being told of what news was come into the town from the assizes, 
applied himself to the mayor of the town : but, he being absent in 
the country, he applied himself to the next principal magistrate, to 
offer himself to justice, if any man had anything to inform of, and 
to show him his face, if occasion required. 

" That being dismissed, as reason good, he travelled on as his 
business required, to Tiverton; and hearing that one Justice Stafford, 
near Crediton, had granted a warrant for him to be apprehended 
and brought before him, though without any information upon oath, 
or mentioning to have him brought before any other justice of the 
peace, he sent him a letter to acquaint him where he was, and which 
way he was going ; and the names of the towns he would be at, if 
his worship thought fit to send for him. 

" He cannot but laugh at the wisdom and courage of a country 

justice, the wise Esquire S , who, having carefully issued out his 

warrant for the author, after he could not but know he was gone, 
and searched every house but that where he lodged, showed his folly 
and his temper both at a time. Had these wise gentlemen designed 
really to have come to hand, as they call it, with the author of this, 
nothing was more easy than to have done it; and a small difficulty 
would have made it out, that they knew which road he was gone, 
and to what towns ; but, like the famed hero that always looked for 
his enemy when he knew he could not be found, they sent their 
warrants just the contrary way ; having more desire to have it said, 
they granted a warrant, than that they had executed it." 

Now that the elections were over, De Foe turned his attention to 
the duties of the elected M.P.'s, as to their attending or not attend- 
ing the House of Commons at pleasure; and the serious conse- 
quences that may attend an habitual inattention to this duty of 
punctuality on this momentous question. He strenuously insists 
upon an early and constant attendance of the members, and gives a 
melancholy instance of the mischief that may be done by a neglect 
of vigilance on the part of members, in the case of Lord Holland, 
beheaded in the time of the Civil Wars, by the casting vote of the 
Speaker, when one of his friends was absent on some trivial business, 
which caused the loss of the life of this noble lord. The friend took 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 287 

the circumstance so fully to heart, as to die shortly afterwards of 
grief and mental upbraidings. De Foe makes use of this incident, 
to show the necessity of constant vigilance and attendance, early 
and constantly. 

On the change of the ministry, and the throwing out the more 
prejudiced portion, the Duke of Buckingham, Earl of Nottingham, 
Sir Edward Seymour, and their spies — spies? Yes, spies! — their 
dependants of stools and sticks, set as a watch or restraining power 
upon the action, mental and corporeal, of fettered royalty; I say, 
when these men were removed in April, 1704, to make room for 
more liberal and less dangerous men, Lord Haversham joined the 
Tories, although brought up a dissenter, and raised to the peerage 
by the late monarch, William III. 

On Nov. 15, this Lord Haversham introduced a motion into the 
House of Commons on the state of the nation; and, like a disap- 
pointed man, made all the noise he could against the peace- and - 
union principles advocated by De Foe at this time. The speech of 
this lord was printed, and De Foe replied to it, he charging his 
lordship with ingratitude to his late benefactor; and his lordship 
charging De Foe with being a mercenary writer, which imputation 
De Foe as indignantly repels. This dispute between our hero of the 
pen, and a disappointed place-hunting lord, made a great noise at 
the time, so much so that I cannot well slip over this page of De 
Foe's history without a passing notice ; as for Lord Haversham's 
turning Tory, because his pretensions to power, place, profit, and 
pension, were not appreciated in high diplomatic circles, I should 
treat with a neglect due to a spoiled child, who cries because — it 
rains. On this lord, De Foe writes with manly self-reliance and 
defiance, which I could quote at length; but the subject — Lord 
Haversham — is too contemptible for me to waste space upon ; for 
space in pages is now becoming a subject of anxiety with me ; I 
must clip all down, if possible, at any sacrifice of quotation, to one 
readable volume. How often do we hear — " That is a heavy, scarcely 
readable book 1" and "What a pity ! No one to revise and curtail. 
Oh ! dear beyond expression — three shillings for the volume ! Why, 
there is not a tenpenny-worth of ideas in it — so prosy, so long, so 



288 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

tiresome; and such a style ! — read it! why, I will defy any one to 
read it, with profit ; they talk of light reading, of which we all com- 
plain; but this prosy stuff is reading with a vengeance; for there is 
weight enough here." 

What a recompense for a poor writer, who has spent weeks — 
yea ! months, in reading greasy old itchy pamphlets or broadsheets, 
to bring before the reader some half-dozen ideas or secrets, which 
have been laid upon the dusty shelves of some bankrupt hall, which 
has been let furnished to some racing or fox-hunting squires for 
the better part of a century ; in short, ever since the old boy who 
embarrassed the estate by representing the neighbouring borough 
on true Old English principles — "for he was a jolly good fellow" — 
died — yes ! died, and left things not all square at the hall. 

About this time, a poor unfortunate author of the name of Dre- 
lincourt was so rash as to publish a dull, heavy book, without con- 
sulting his friends in the book trade, who knew well what would 
take with the public as purchasers. Well, this Drelincourt pub- 
lished his truly heavy book unadvised, and paid the penalty ; for 
the public would neither read nor buy ; so the poor fellow had to 
keep the whole impression, unsold, on his hands. In his difficulty 
— to him a great one — he applied to De Foe for advice ; who told 
him that a marvellous preface might sell the book; and that he 
would write one for him, to be fixed to the whole impression, yet 
unsold. This preface was written and prefixed, as agreed upon ; 
when, marvellous to relate, the impression was not only readily sold 
off, but the work went through forty editions, and had such a sale 
as no other book in England ever had, excepting Bunyan's great 
work, the Pilgrim 9 s Progress. 

This preface recites that Mrs. Veal died at Dover on a Friday 
afternoon, at ten minutes after three o' clock ; and that at twelve 
o'clock at noon, next day, just as the church-clock chimes were 
going at Canterbury, this said Mrs. Veal called upon her old friend, 
Mrs. Bargrave, who lived near the Market Place, and sat with her 
one hour and forty minutes, discoursing on a variety of subjects, 
but particularly that most suited for advancing years — the necessity 
of providing for a future state by divine meditation, and secret and 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 289 

constant prayer. These two conversed freely on this solemn sub- 
ject, and compared notes on their various reading : Sherlock on 
Death being pronounced good, but neither so forcible in argument, 
nor comforting in spirit, as Drelineourt's delightful book, on the 
Fear of Death. On Mrs. Veal's death being known, as to day, 
hour, and minute, at Canterbury, Mrs. Bargrave declared that 
Mrs. Veal had called upon her, and sat at her house, twenty hours 
after she was reported to have died at Dover. Of course there was 
a considerable sensation, both at Dover and Canterbury, as to time, 
dress, conversation, &c. ; and her dwelling so emphatically, under 
such circumstances, on the beauties of Drelincourt, soon made the 
thinking portion of aged matrons take to reading ; and Drelincourt 
on Death became the book in demand ; when the first edition was 
sold in a week, to the great relief of the frightened author. 

De Foe, Swift, Ebenezer Elliott, and others, always gauged their 
usefulness in any political work by the density of the rage of the 
party opposed to that work. These men always laid it down as an 
axiom in political warfare, that when political opponents are indif- 
ferent, lukewarm, or contemptuous — smiling, only little progress was 
being made in the onward rush of contention ; but when strife waxes 
warm, and malignant defiance takes the place of self-complacency, 
then work is done. This I have found ; and I look upon a politician 
who only excites a smile of contempt from self-complacency as a 
very harmless sort of a creature, whether he be one or other of the 
great plundering sections of this deluded, confiding nation. Now, 
De Foe says, it would be useless for him " to repeat the threaten- 
ing letters, and opprobrious terms, the bear-garden language, I have 
daily thrown upon me for persuading men to peace. If I had been 
assassinated as often as I have been threatened with pistols, daggers, 
and swords, I had long ago paid dear for this undertaking" — the 
undertaking of the advocacy of peace in his Review. 

I have been a writer on political questions for thirty years, and I 
have seen the temper of parties excited in proportion to the magni- 
tude of the evil to be defended on the one hand, and to be redressed 
on the other. Corn-law repeal, to an insolvent landlord, was an 
exciting topic ; and so was church reform to the pluralist- expectant- 

19 



290 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

sun-worshipper for preferment, or clerical sycophant. But I never 
met with so earnest a spirit of despair as on my affirming that the 
Privy Council attempting the education of dissenters' children in 
church principles with the public taxes, is the conspiracy of Cardi- 
nals Richelieu or Mazarin, the ministers of Louis XIII. and XIV. 
of France : that the principle was worked against the French Pro- 
testants of France ; and that it came to France from Italy with 
Catherine de Medici, the diabolical mother of all intrigue and 
iniquity at the court of France; that it is, in fact, a conspiracy 
stinking in the nostrils as the pestiferous blast of brimstone — Flo- 
rence and the Inquisition. The Privy Council tampering with edu- 
cation must be put down by dissent, or dissent will be put down by 
the Privy Council. This contest will go on till universal suffrage 
close the scene, and education will stand on its own legs, and right 
and justice, energy and sincerity, will take the palm of victory; and 
— what? Corruptions in the church will go; royalty will be free from 
spies ; free from dictation of party ; as being the sovereign, not of 
half-a-dozen Lord John Russells, but of the millions — the people, 
who wish to see royalty set free from party spies; royalty unfettered ; 
royalty happy. With a reformed House of Commons, and a con- 
tented people, Buckingham Palace would know a freedom which it 
never knew before, when under the dictation of party ; and the spies 
and cormorants of faction would give way to freedom, more honest 
men, and more effective measures. 

The above remarks have been elicited by the statement of De Foe 
in his Review, that his inculcating peace and union had given the 
greatest satisfaction to those upon whose judgment he most relied; 
and he had undeniable testimony in the implacable rage and malice 
of the high party, by which they acknowledge the injury he had 
done to their cause, than which he desired no greater honour. 

De Foe commenced the year 1706 by publishing a Hymn to 
Peace, in Pindaric verse :— 

When to the world thou mak'st a short return, 

Me only thou hast scorned to shun ; 

Me thou revisitest not ; but storms of men, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 291 

Voracious and unsatisfied as death, 

Spoil in their hands and poison in their breath, 

With rage of devils hunt me down, 

And to abate my peace, destroy their own. 

Brought up in teaching sorrow's school, 

In peace and patience I profess my soul ; 

Am master of my mind, 

And there the heaven of satisfaction find. 

Let them ten thousand barbarous methods try, 

When they '11 no longer let me live, I '11 die ; 

Of all their fury I shall have 

An uncontested conquest in the grave. 

Poor De Foe ! he wrote for peace to the community ; but to 
attain peace,, he had to wade through such a lane of abuse from 
parties who had a vested interest in wrong, that he, poor fellow, 
the great pioneer of national regeneration and enlightenment, never 
knew peace in his own person, and in his own spirit. No ! his life 
was one continued scuffle and elbowing of contending principles 
and interests ; for on Feb. 5, 1706, he has to complain again in his 
Review, of his treatment by the printers selling trashy pamphlets in 
the streets with his name affixed to them ; and this mortified him 
greatly; for, although he had written scores of pamphlets on all 
subjects, yet he had never come down to writing penny nauseous 
ribaldry on halfpenny sheets and half-sheets, and cried, too, in the 
streets as his ; the trashy villany carrying his name at the bottom 
of the page as the writer. Poor fellow ! he writes emphatically in 
this Review ; — " I never write penny papers, this excepted, nor ever 
shall, unless my name is publicly set to them ; and I hope this will 
clear me of the scandal, though it cannot fortify me . against the 
damage." His Review was a mortifying dose of political physic for 
his opponents, published at a penny only, and circulated freely at 
all inns and coffee-houses, to the great mortification of his adver- 
saries, who could not stop the reading, nor the channel of intelli- 
gence, by the clearest and most industrious, as well as courageous 
political writer of that day. This Review was a bitter pill for his 
political and social opponents, who took every means to depreciate 

19* 



292 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

the writer by bringing his name into contempt, and by hiring 
scoundrels to go to the coffee-houses for the purpose of stealing or 
burning the copies of his newspaper daily, as the numbers were 
published. 

Having mentioned the Quakers in his Review, and said, " that 
they are not only Christians, but many of them better Christians 
than those who pretend to condemn them," a paltry writer of the 
street-hawking class brings out the Quakers' Catechism, a penny 
trash, shoe-horned upon the public for buyers, by the addition of 
the Shortest Way with Daniel De Foe : " a true printer's cheat, 
that when people were expecting great things, and some new pro- 
posal concerning what was to be done with the man that so many 
want to be rid of, when they come to look into the book, found it 
to contain nothing but a long rhapsody of Billingsgate language 
and raillery against the Quakers, which he must have a great talent 
of self-denial, that can bear the reading." 

De Foe at this time wrote largely in his Review on toleration of 
religious sects ; but his views on this subject may be compared to 
those of his political economy: crude, raw, narrow, half- formed, 
self-taught principles, in some cases ; while in others, collected from 
the narrow, absurd crudities of previous writers, who wrote before, 
instead of after, the great political-economic architect, Adam Smith, 
of honourable memory. 

An Act to prevent Frauds committed by Bankrupts was intro- 
duced in the early part of 1706 ; which measure had been forwarded 
greatly by the writings of De Foe ; for it was a subject he had 
thoroughly studied, both theoretically and practically, most of his 
life. His career had been a checkered one, from the persecution 
of political enemies, as well as from his own imprudences ; for I 
believe him to have been a thoroughly imprudent man. 

The Review of May 21, 1706, was exclusively occupied by the 
Fight of Ramillies, on which De Foe turns poetic again, in a pro- 
duction nearly as expeditious as the victory ; the composition costing 
De Foe only three hours. The 27th of June being appointed as a 
day of thanksgiving, the Queen went in procession to St. Paul's, 
while De Foe devoted his Review for that day to another poem, in 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 293 

which he ascribes to the God of all victory the praise due unto his 
name, as the wise Disposer of all events ; while he, at the same 
time, gives all due honour and praise to the Duke of Marlborough, 
as a great and successful general. 

On June 8, 1706, De Foe wrote in his Review "a full account of a 
young woman who was declared mad and conveyed to a private mad- 
house for the sake of stealing her fortune, by her own mother, two 
brothers, a doctor, and one or more attorneys ; an assistant or two 
from Bedlam, and an infamous apothecary, professing to be a doctor 
of lunatics ; the attorney being the most active man of business in 
this nefarious affair, obtained a commission of lunacy against her, 
himself being named one of the commissioners, the proceedings of 
which commissioners were on a part with the other acts of the 
plotters ; these men found a jury to their purpose, who brought her 
in lunatic, without ever seeing her, which they ought to have done, 
and which some of them may yet like to answer for : one pretence 
for not bringing her before the jury being, that she was raving mad, 
and not capable of being brought before a jury. All this while the 
gentlewoman was quiet, and innocently thinking of anything rather 
than what was contriving for her ; but lived privately, retired, and 
very frugal, having saved nearly ,£600 in five years out of the 
income of her estate." 

" The design being fully ripe, and completed by the rash verdict 
of the jury aforesaid, the rest of the scene is all violence and fury; 
for these people, having provided proper instruments, come up stairs 
to this gentlewoman into her chamber, on some frivolous pretences, 
the time unusually late, and on a Saturday night ; they had, to 
assist them, provided two women and one man : the man, as we 
are since informed, a doorkeeper in Bedlam, and one of the women 
a nurse in a madhouse. These coming into her chamber, seize her 
in a most barbarous manner, handcuff her hands behind her with 
irons, bind her legs together with cords, and attempt to thrust a 
handkerchief or cloth into her mouth ; and in this cruel manner 
carry her away by force, put her into a coach, and hurry her to one 
of our private Bedlams, putting her into the hands of the aforesaid 
infamous apothecary ; of whom the world will hear more hereafter. 



294 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

' ' In this house, she continued about six or seven weeks, under 
the most horrid treatment that ever was heard of, by his express 
command, and often in his presence ; and we want words to express 
it to you ; but the further particulars are preparing for the world, 
and to which we refer you. 

" It may suffice to tell you for the present, they kept her bound 
hand and foot in her bed, such an one as it was, and tied to the 
bedpost for several days, reduced to strange extremity, beat and 
pinched her by cruel and barbarous wretches called nurses, and 
forced nauseous draughts down her throat, which they called 
physic ; and which she, being apprehensive they designed her de- 
struction, and might poison her, refused; but they forced her 
mouth open with iron instruments, and poured into her what they 
thought fit, wounding her very much with their violences and 
inhumanities. 

" In this horrid condition, and under this most villanous treat- 
ment, they kept her about seven weeks ; no body but whom that 
apothecary permitted, being suffered to come near her. Her old 
neighbours, hearing that all was not right at the Bedlam, petitioned 
the Lord Keeper for qualified persons to visit her; which was 
granted, and then the poor woman was found in sound mind, but 
horribly treated in body, and so deeply afflicted at her misfortune ; 
but clear in her judgment, composed in her mind, and of good 
understanding. 

" Whereupon a petition was immediately drawn in her name to 
my Lord Keeper, praying that she might be brought before his 
lordship, in order to be examined whether she ought to be treated 
as a lunatic or no. Upon this petition, an order was obtained for 
her to attend, which she accordingly did ; and in a short time, my 
Lord Keeper was so fully satisfied in all the particulars aforesaid, 
and of her being no lunatic, that his lordship was pleased to express 
himself with the utmost detestation and abhorrence of such villanous 
proceedings; ordered the commission of lunacy to be immediately 
superseded, and all proceedings thereon to be dissolved and made 
void ; for it is to be observed that the brothers and mother of this 
young woman had obtained, with their commission of lunacy, an 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 295 

order to have the guardianship of the lunatic committed to them, 
as also the possession of her estate." 

Such arguments as the above, was De Foe in the habit of using 
against those private dens of rapine, cruelty, and murder — private 
madhouses. Perhaps it was to this public benefactor of the human 
family that public attention was most forcibly directed from time 
to time; for the subject was no mere passing empty speculation of 
the day ; but an indwelling fixed duty — fixed in the heart of this 
good man, for he was one; though vain, improvident, volatile, and 
foolish, in some matters : those hard multiplication, hard-corned 
facts; which frills, buckles, swords, house, servants, coach, and 
general swell of respectability, can not fritter away. De Foe 
was a vain man, but he was a — good man. 

De Foe now turned his attention to writing a Preface to a new 
edition of A Plea for the Nonconformists, by Thomas Delaune, 
who died in Newgate during his imprisonment for this book, 
printed twenty years ago, which being seized by the messenger of 
the press, was afterwards burnt by the common hangman ; and now 
reprinted from the author's original copy, with a Preface by the 
Author of the Review. Prefaces to works at this time were fre- 
quently very important, and in some cases more important than the 
work intended to be elucidated; and these prefaces, even in our day, 
after the lapse of one hundred and fifty years, frequently carry a 
value to a book, which would be low indeed, were it not for the 
preface attached to it. 

This poor fellow, Delaune, was tried before Judge Jeffreys at the 
Old Bailey on Jan. 17, 1666, when his book was condemned to be 
burnt before the Royal Exchange, and he to linger in Newgate for 
the imposed fine for fifteen months, till he died; when he formed 
one of the Martyr Brigade of eight thousand Protestant dissenters 
who perished in prison in the reign of Charles II. ; and this merely 
for dissenting from the Church of England. Shade of Privy- 
Council scheme of educating the people into the church ! Eight 
thousand people destroyed by Charles II., because they chose to 
worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. 
Joint-stock companies appear to have had charms for De Foe ; 



296 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

but this would only be for a time, and that time the limit for the 
complete command of ready money, for the purchase of scrip or deben- 
tures. Perhaps the hosiery agency, or the pantile trade at Tilbury 
Fort, might do something to enforce caution for the future. Be 
this as it may, the mine adventure was incorporated under the name 
of the " The Governor and Company of the Mine Adventurers of 
England." These were principally lead and copper mines, on which 
large sums were advanced, shares allotted, and money borrowed. 
Capital stock being filled up, mills were erected, and smelting fur- 
naces ; lands were bought, cottages and dwelling-houses were built, 
and all, no doubt, at a premium. De Foe being consulted on this 
scheme, and its probable chances of rubbing off the borrowed capital 
by the profits, referred to their own printed work, entitled "An 
Account of the clear Profits of extracting Silver out of Lead, by the 
Governor and Commissioners of the Mine Adventurers of England; 
taken from their original Accounts, and signed l Thomas Horn, 
Accountant to the Company/ " On a full investigation of these 
accounts, De Foe found that the profits of the concern would not 
pay the perpetual annuitants ; created, I suppose, on their " calling 
in the scrip," and "consolidating the stock;" for I have some 
smattering left of these speculating terms from railway-scrip times. 
In the Review of April 30, 1706, De Foe fully discusses the merits 
of this bubble ; for such it was, and was proved to be. He did it 
in all coolness and fairness ; but, as he had acted for the " bears " 
and a fall in the market followed, he was threatened with violence 
by certain stockholders in the concern. Poor fellow ! he complains 
of the treatment threatened, as though he were always wrong, and 
always in danger from violence for speaking the truth; for he says — 
"I suppose the end is to terrify me from making public what I have 
further to say upon that head. But in this, also, they will be mis- 
taken ; and as I have never been over apt to consult my prudentials, 
when truth and matter of fact are before me, though when much 
more powerful people are concerned than are here, so I am obliged 
to acquaint the world, that I think myself bound, to avoid the 
scandal of being afraid to speak the truth, to go on with my observa- 
tions on that head ; and, as I shall descend further into particulars 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 297 

than I intended first to do, I shall, perhaps, show such evidence for 
my calculations, as may inform the world of some particulars, con- 
cerning which they are at present ignorant, but will be very glad to 
know. As to threatenings and prosecutions [for depreciating the 
scrip !], truth is above fear; and, if I say any thing else, I ask no 
quarter." 

De Foe offers to do the company every reparation in his power if 
they can pay the annuitants (debenture preference holders, I sup- 
pose) out of the profits; but, "till then/' he adds, "if ever I come 
to be keeper of the nation's madhouse, I cannot in justice but set 
apart one of the largest rooms for the benefit of this company." 

Dr. Thomas Browne, — a man I have, many pages back, classed 
with Ned Ward ; but before the prefix of Dr. had been placed as 
a set-off or ornament to the plain Thomas, — this man wrote A 
Dialogue between Church and no Church; or } a Rehearsal of the 
Review. This doctor, like some other doctors carrying more sail 
than ballast, opens upon De Foe, and terms himself David, and 
De Foe the Philistines ; and he proposes to do great things with " a 
few smooth stones out of the brook, to smite the brazen forehead of 
this insulting champion of our Israel." He acknowledges that De 
Foe " has treated the affairs of the nation, in relation to trade and 
commerce, particularly in his late Review about bankrupts, with a 
great deal of compassion towards the unfortunate, and with many 
home arguments to such unmerciful creditors as would treat their 
debtors worse than Turks use their dogs; though they are not 
assured but that the same case they are prosecuting with such 
severity, may be their own in a few days." This doctor will respect 
De Foe so long as he keeps to trade and commerce ; but when he 
launches into the deeps of religion, politics, philosophy, &c, he 
would reclaim him. 

De Foe makes some remarks in his Review for April 8, on this 
antagonist, stating that he did not expect to be so honoured in 
being so noticed by so august an individual, w 7 ho had the honour to 
write letters with plain contradictions to ministers of state ; and, 
that as Dr. Browne had been so fully occupied in bullying the 
government, lampooning the nobility, affronting my Lord Keeper 



298 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

and the Secretary of State ; and in translating Horace, or correcting 
the false grammar in his former translations, but all wrong as to 
conjecture; the doctor being there as an antagonist; DeFoe desires 
one point for the doctor's consideration; that is, the pen being 
dipped in falsehood is not quite keeping up the dignity of a gentle- 
man. Poor Browne ! — his paper soon fell; for it was all froth ; he 
only brought out eight or ten numbers. 

On June 18, 1706, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane gave a benefit 
towards defraying the expense of repairing the chapel in Russell 
Court, which had lately been purchased from the dissenters, under 
the charge of Dr. Daniel Burgess. The landlord, being opposed to 
dissenters, dispossessed them, at the expiration of their lease, at the 
instigation of Dr. Lancaster, the vicar of St. Martin's ; who per- 
suaded the parish to purchase the building, and fit it up as a chapel 
of ease for the Established Church. 

This benefit for the church attracted the notice of De Foe, who 
wrote freely on the subject in his Review of Thursday, June 20, 
1706; where he intimates that the victories of Marlborough, being 
Whig victories, only endangering the church ; as a Tory victory 
would be a propping up both of chancel and tower ; and this com- 
bination of comedy and pulpit, both being Tory, must have been to 
put down dissent. 

' ' ' Towards the defraying the charge of repairing and fitting up the 
chapel in Russell Court, at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, this 
present Tuesday, being the 18th of June, will be presented the 
tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, with singing by Mr. Hughes, 
&c. &c, and entertainment of dancing by Monsieur Cherrier, Miss 
Santlow, his scholar, and Mr. Evans. Boxes, 5s. ; Pit, 3s. ; First 
Gallery, 2s.; Upper Gallery, Is.' 

" From whence I offer this observation to the serious thoughts of 
those gentlemen who are apprehensive of the church's danger, viz., 
If the devil be come over to us and assist to support the church, the 
devil must be in it, if the church be in danger. And here, gentle- 
men, let us make a few remarks upon this worthy subject. Certainly, 
you gentlemen of the High- Church show very little respect to the 
church, and cannot be such friends to its establishment as you pre- 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 299 

tend to be ; since, though you have the house built to your hands 
(for this chapel was before, a dissenting meeting-house), yet you 
must go a-begging to the playhouse, to carry on the work. Or is 
this a general banter upon the church, that people must be invited 
to go to the brink of the gulph by the religious argument of his 
being for the church ; as if the lady, that now gives five shillings 
towards the repairing the church, would not contribute the money 
unless she could see a play into the bargain ? Or, on the other 
hand, as if there were not farce enough acted upon that stage, the 
pulpit, but the hearers must be sent to the theatre to make it up. 
Some guess, rather, this may be a religious wheedle, to form an 
excuse for the ladies, and justify their so frequent visits to the 
theatre ; since, the money being thus disposed of, they gratify their 
vanity and fancy, they show their piety, please their vice, and smuggle 
their consciences ; something like that old zeal, of robbing orphans 
to build almshouses. 

" Hard times, gentlemen, hard times, indeed, these are with the 
church, to send her to the playhouse to gather pew-money. For 
shame, gentlemen ; go to the church and pay the money there, and 
never let the playhouse have such a claim to its establishment as to 
say the church is beholden to her. Sic tempora mutantur ! Times 
are finely changed. In the late reigns the church built the play- 
houses, but now the playhouse builds the church ; from whence I 
cannot but prophesy, that the time will come, when either the 
church will pull down the playhouse, or the playhouse will pull 
down the church. 

" Now, Mr. Leslie, have at the dissenters ; for, if they do not 
come to this play, they are certainly enemies to the church; put 
their negative upon repairing and fitting up the church, which, by 
Mr. Leslie's usual logic, may easily be proved to be pulling down 
the church. Now, Mr. Collier, you are quite aground, and all your 
sarcasms upon the playhouse, all your satires upon the stage, are 
as so many arrows shot at the church; for every convert of your 
making, every one you have been the means of keeping from the 
playhouse, has so far lessened the church stock, and tended to let 
the church fall upon our heads. Never talk of the stage any more ; 



300 LIFE OP DE POE. 

for, if the church cannot be repaired nor fitted up without the play- 
house, to write againstthe playhouse is to write against the church; 
to discourage the playhouse is to weaken the church ; and you rob 
the church of the people's bounty, which is one of the worst sorts 
of sacrilege. Nor is it unworthy our remark, to see how all hands 
aloft are zealous in their calling for the church. Can our church be 
in danger ? How is it possible ? The whole nation is solicitous 
and at work for her safety and prosperity. The Parliament address ; 
the Queen consults ; the ministry execute ; the army fights ; and all 
for the church ! Peggy Hughes sings ; Monsieur Ramadon plays ; 
Miss Santlow dances ; Monsieur Cherrier teaches ; and all for the 
church ! Here 's heavenly doings ! Here 's harmony ! Your sing- 
ing psalms is hurdy-gurdy to this music ; and all your preaching- 
actors are fools to these. Besides, there's another sort of music 
here : the case is altered, the clergy preach and read here, &c, and 
get money for it of the church. But these sing and dance and act, 
and talk bawdy, and the church gets money by the bargain ; there's 
the music of it ! 

" But, to talk more serious. Pray let us put things a little upon 
the square; the great law of retaliation comes in here; and, as the 
playhouse owes its original and advancement to our late champions 
of High Church, they can do no less than reverence their founders, 
and relieve them in the present straitness of their circumstances. 
And again, in their turn : suppose the playhouse should be burnt 
down, as it once was, the church could not deny to read a brief in 
every parish for the rebuilding it, with a ' Pray, remember the great 
loss by fire!' But pray let us inquire here, how comes the chapel 
in Russell Court to stand in such ill circumstances, that the play- 
house must be called upon for this odd and most unusual charity ? 
Some horrible scandal must lie somewhere. 'Tis plain the chapel 
was Mr. Daniel Burgess's meeting-house before ; and as the auditory 
is large, the persons concerned numerous and able, whence comes 
this deficiency ? It must be from want of sense of the convenience, 
or want of regard to the church ; 'tis a most scandalous contempt 
of the church. What, send her a-begging to the playhouse ! Of all 
the churches in the world, I believe none was ever served thus 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 301 

before. What a reproach is this to the neighbourhood of Russell 
Court Chapel ! What, gentlemen,, nobody to repair the church for 
you, but those that are every day reproved in it ! Must the play- 
house boxes build your pews ? the playhouse pit raise your gallery ? 
This is the ready way to have the people call them both playhouses, 
and that, though they have different places to officiate in, they are 
but the same congregation. 

" Charity would fain crowd in here, and say in behalf of this 
action, that the playhouse is reformed, and that it goes hand-in-hand 
with the church, and is a true friend to it, as now appears. I do 
not know, I confess, but that the playhouse may, in some things, 
conform to the church ; but I hope the church does in nothing go 
hand -in-hand with the playhouse. 

" Well, His very unhappy that no manner of contribution could 
have been raised but this, for the building a church ; His like the 
Italians laying a tax upon their bawdy-houses. In short, this con- 
tribution is but a civil taking out a license for playhouses ; and they 
may now claim fairly a liberty, and tax you with ingratitude if you 
refuse them. 

" It would be worth inquiry now, how the play fills. The players 
are very familiar with their Maker, here, methinks, and religion 
comes in, like the poet, for a third day. Now, His observable, that 
the respect to the poet is shown by the crowds on the poet's day ; 
if there be a full house then, His a signal of his reputation, and tells 
the world what a value they put upon his performance. The 18th 
of June is the church's third day at the play. Now, gentlemen, we 
shall see what reputation religion has among our playhunters, and 
whether they value her above common poets or no. I am afraid 
religion and the church will have but a poor day of it ; on the other 
hand, there will be room for strange distinctions. First, here you 
will see who are the best churchmen, High or Low; for are the 
players High Church, as most allow, if they are of any church at 
all ; then a thin or full house determines who are the best friends 
to the church. But, then, here is another misfortune ; and I would 
have the ladies very careful how they brand themselves with the 
scandal of it — that they go to this play for the sake of the church, 



302 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

certainly never go to the church ; if they did, they might find ways 
to give their money into better hands. In short, the observations 
on this most preposterous piece of church-work are so many, that 
they cannot come into the compass of this paper. But, if the money 
raised here be employed to re-edify this chapel, I would have it, as 
frequent in like cases, written over the door, in capital letters : — 

"This Church was Re-edified anno 1706, at the Expense 
and by the charitable contributions of the enemies of the 
Reformation of our Morals, and to the eternal scandal 
and most just reproach of the church of england and the 
Protestant Religion. 

Lucifer Prince of Darkness, 

and )• Churchwardens" 

Hamlet Prince of Denmark, 



:) 



This number of the Review excited a good deal of feeling in cer- 
tain quarters, where shame was felt for the partnership of Playhouse, 
Church, and Co. ; and an answer was published, and an attempt 
made at a satisfactory explanation ; but all to no purpose ; for De 
Foe only returned to the charge in his next Review, in which he 
says it is not fair to laugh twice at one jest ; but who can help it ? 
for, says he — 

" If the playhouse is addicted to acts of charity, why do they not 
maintain their own poor ? Why not raise a pension for their poor 
brethren at the Haymarket ; or, which would be something to their 
honour, make good the subscriptions that are yet unpaid, and dis- 
charge the debt to the poor workmen who built the house? This 
playhouse charity is set with the bottom upward; like a famous 
dignified gentleman in England, who ran in debt to honest men, to 
give alms to knaves. Perhaps it may be said, the actors are not a 
corporation, and have nothing to do with each other, unless it be to 
help one to starve the other. Well, but, gentlemen, though you 
are not a corporation, you are a fraternity ; and as the deviPs broker 
said to Dr. Griffith, ' You are all of a trade ; you are all the devil's 
brokers ;' and you ought, in common prudence, and to support the 
honour of the employment, to have relieved your brethren first, and 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 303 

have cleared the prisons of some of the best of them. Besides, I am 
at a loss for the coherence of the thing : — the playhouse and the 
church ! There 's no manner of philosophy in it ; 'tis yoking the 
poles; 'tis saying the Christ-cross-row backward; and nobody can 
tell whether it be to raise the devil or to lay him. There could not 
have been such a circle-full of angles put together again, and all the 
men of wit, either in God's church, or the devil's chapel, could not 
have composed such another piece of discord. 

" Some people have been rummaging their heads for the design 
of it ; which they say must be something extraordinary ; yet I can 
see no need for so wild a guess. He that shot this gun, took aim, 
no doubt ; and what did he aim at, think you ? Why, the money, 
man ! What should he aim at ? And, whoever he was, whether 
actor or churchwarden, or a rump of both formed into a junto for 
this weighty affair, my life for yours, the money was the matter. 
The players, I allow, had the best prospect of the two ; of which, 
without doubt, they had a forethought : as, first, a full house, and 
an united benefit; and secondly, a snack with the club. And there 's 
private interests, a new reputation for loyalty to the church, and a 
screen from justice ; because one good turn deserves another. 

" Again, some say, this is a Low-Church plot upon the High- 
Church playhouse ; and a pretty banter this makes, indeed ! For 
the Haymarket building, they say, is a Low-Church playhouse, and 
Drury Lane a High-Church playhouse. Two things are concluded 
from hence : — 1st : That the High gentlemen are the best friends 
of the church ; for when did ever the Low- Church players offer to 
give the church a play at their house ? 'Tis really very kindly done, 
and their care of the church is so remarkable as to merit being 
recorded. 2ndly : It necessarily follows, that the church is very 
much beholden to the playhouse, that they will give away their 
profits to its assistance. 

"We talk of reforming our manners, and setting up rules of 
government ; but to attempt it this way, seems to me to make a 
comedy of the government, and a tragedy of the church. How odd 
a sight it would be to see bills put up thus : ' At the Theatre Royal 
in Drury Lane, this present Thursday, being the 27th of June, will 



304 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

be acted a new play, entitled The Church, a Tragedy.' This, I 
think, is certain ; let the play be what it will, His a tragedy to the 
church, and one of the shortest ways to pull her down. What 
horrid work is here made of religion ! The sacred mask has been a 
disguise to many hypocrites, but never was put upon the face of the 
playhouse before. I cannot deny it to be a very quaint invention 
to persuade people, and a cunning way to fill the house : that 
they may go to the play for God's sake ! Our children would now 
have a fair excuse to us, when we refuse them leave to go to the 
play : ' Why, sir, His for the benefit of the church ; for our money 
is to be given to build up the church/ ' Excellent excuse, child/ I 
should say ; f so you must lay out your money with the devil, that 
he may build up a house for God with it : sacrifice to vanity for the 
encouragement of piety. Rare work, indeed/ " 

In August of this year, some players went to Oxford, and obtained 
a license from the vice-chancellor to act plays in that city. On 
which De Foe opened his battery again on the imprudence of the 
act, and calls upon the heads of colleges to look at their title-deeds, 
and professed object of the several founders who have endowed the 
several colleges and halls " for the honour of God, the encourage- 
ment of learning, the increase of virtue, piety, and true religion, I 
give and grant," &c. 

" Pray, gentlemen," asks De Foe, "which of all these ends of the 
founders do these comedians answer? W T ith what face can an 
English clergyman suffer the habits and vestments of a Christian 
priest to be seen in the lewd crowd of the admirers of vice ? " 

" How can the loose strumpet tremble at the judgment of God, 
denounced against her sins by the tongue of her minister, when she 
saw the same serious countenance that now reproves her, deformed 
with the smiles of pleasure at the vicious banter of a lewd repre- 
sentation in a bawdy play? Shall that hand, extended in laying 
out her crimes, carry any awe with it, which the day before was 
lifted up to applaud the vile performance of those sons of hell ? 
Pardon me, if I say, you cannot but lessen the esteem the world has 
of your virtue, whatever it has of your learning." — Vide Review, 
vol. iii. pp. 377-9. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 305 

Review, vol. iii.p. 397 : — " Being launched into the ocean of luna- 
ticks, in search of that vast fountain of general extravagance from 
whence all our national frenzies flow; such various scenes have 
presented themselves to my view, that really render the account 
something confused. I have touched at trade lunaticks; and en- 
tered a little upon the black scene of the fury of creditors, against 
even those debtors who are willing freely to strip themselves of all 
the remnants of their misfortune, that they might be at liberty to 
work for more. I should inquire, I say, further into these horrid 
things, were it not that it might seem to be drawing the picture of 
my own case, which is now upon the stage, than which no man's 
case, that ever came for relief by this new act of Parliament, has 
ever been more severe ; and than whom no man is treated worse, 
on his flying to this sanctuary of the law, for deliverance.. 

" I confess myself surprised at my own affair ; and I should not 
have troubled the world with it, if it were not something never 
heard of before. Several debtors have been used hardly by cre- 
ditors, and their discharge vigorously opposed. But was ever the 
world so mad ! The unhappy author of this, claiming a discharge 
from old misfortunes on a clear surrender, as by the law is directed, 
finds himself opposed, not by those he owes money too, but by those 
that owe him money ; not by those who by disaster are wronged, 
but by those that have wronged, cheated, and plundered him of that 
money which should have helped to discharge others ; to whom he 
never owed a shilling, of whom he never borrowed, but to whom he 
always lent ; and who have actually defrauded him of near £500, 
advanced in compassion to save them from destruction. 

"If this paper should acquaint the world how these people have 
hitherto treated its author ; how they seized upon his writings, left 
only in trust ; how they conveyed away their relation, a partner, 
that he might not be an evidence ; and compounded his private 
debts for his, without which he would not go ; how they have sued 
him for bonds given, and afterwards discharged in partnership, and 
sued in the names of the persons to whom they were paid ; without 
their knowledge; how, after beginning a suit, they have not dared 
to go on ! after proposing a reference, they have not dared to 

20 



308 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

stand to it ; though accepted, and offered to be determined by their 
own arbitrator ; if I should run on into all these particulars, the 
story would be too black to read." 

I can quote no more. It is the old tale of the light, dressy, 
devil-may-care spendthrift, which has been told a thousand upon a 
thousand times ; always persecuted by relations, friends, foes, and 
strangers, always wrong, always cheated, and never to blame. An- 
other sacrifice to the black-coated, well-brushed, British god — 
Respectability. Daniel De Foe must be respectable — yes ! keep 
his coach upon his pantile trade of Tilbury Fort, and walk Bristol 
streets on Sunday, with wig, sword, ruffles, and frills, if hid from 
bailiffs and creditors for the remaining six days of the week, in a 
garret or a cellar ! 

The lawyer had committed forgery ; the age was mad, and he had 
been fourteen years in retreat, in jeopardy, in broils, and most of 
the time in banishment from his family; all his profits from his 
books had been swallowed up, though that has been very considerable, 
in making gradual payments to creditors j and in defending himself 
against those who would have it not only faster than their fellow- 
creditors, but even faster than it could be got. From this it would 
appear, that he had been in pecuniary difficulties, and separated 
from his family, for the most part, as an improvident husband and 
spendthrift father, from 1692 ; or ten years before the death of his 
great benefactor and friend, William III. of glorious memory. 

Well, William came in 1688, and died in 1702; and De Foe in 
1706, in his Review for August 23, declares that he had been in 
retreat fourteen years, with jeopardy, broils, and most of the time in 
banishment from his family ; and after the above, he goes on to say, 
" that they have since seen him stripped naked by the government, 
and the foundations torn up, on which he had built the prospect of 
paying debts, and raising his family ; and yet now, when by common 
reasoning they ought to believe, the man has not bread for his 
children, have redoubled their attacks, with declarations, executions, 
escape warrants, and God knows how many engines of destruction ; 
as if a gaol and death would pay their debts ; as if money was to be 
found in the blood of the debtor, and they were to open his veins to 
find it. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 307 

That bind the ready hands of Industry, 
Pinion the loilling ivings, and bid men fly. 
Resolved to ruin me the shortest way, 
They strip me naked first, then bid me pay. 

" But if this is not yet all, and though I confess, I did not expect 
it from anybody ; yet as some whisperings have been spread of a 
further plot, even against the life of this unhappy debtor, and that 
among his friends too ; he cannot but take notice of it here, as what 
he thinks the only proper reason, and is indeed one of the chief 
reasons of this publication, and which he hopes the world will allow 
to be a good reason ; and this is a scandalous and vile suggestion, 
that he made concealments to defraud his creditors ; or, in English, 
has not made a fair surrender of his effects. Now as, if this be 
true, he must be the greatest fool, as well as knave, knowing how 
many bloody enemies, as well as base and hypocritical friends, he is 
compassed with ; so, if this be not true, the suggestion is a most 
vile and barbarous scandal. 

" The debtor can be guilty but two ways : either by innocent 
mistake, or by wilful deceit. For the first, omissions are certainly 
possible. Gentlemen, the author of this is no more infallible than 
other men ; he may, and 'tis much if he have not, in the life of 
constant hurries he has lived ; he may have forgotten, [mistaken, 
wrong stated, wrong cast up, or otherwise erred in some part or 
branch of his account ; and if this is your charge, gentlemen — if 
you are Christians, if men of like frailties, and whose case one time 
or other want the same like charity ; if you have anything left in 
you that is moral or human ; if any compassion for a man in danger, 
and a family with seven children that must perish in his disaster, 
help him, gentlemen, help in time, inform him of it, give the need- 
ful hint ; and in common charity, show him this gulph, this pit of 
destruction, before it be too late to retrieve it. 

" Pray, gentlemen, come in with your charge at the meeting, and 
let it appear." 

It would appear from the above, that for fourteen years previous 
to 1706, De Foe had been running up and down the country an 
outcast, for the most part, and escaped, as is always the case with 

20* 



308 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

such outcasts, from the regular domestic comforts of house and 
home ; an alien, stranger, intruder on his own hearthstone — a poli- 
tical secret-service official of the government, and party writer for 
bread; is it so? I should be sorry to detract from one of the 
greatest philosophers England ever knew, as well as one of her 
true-born sons; but yet, I fear, I must say — an improvident man, 
whose necessities compelled him to write for party bread. His 
father, James Foe, butcher, died in lodgings in 1705, leaving no 
will, and probably no effects; and Daniel, the subject of this writing, 
does not account for several years of his own life — I think six years 
— from his leaving Mr. Morton's academy, and again appearing as 
hose-factor in Freeman's Court, Cornhill. Some of De Foe's bio- 
graphers have always represented him as a large Spanish, or large 
Dutch, or large German, or East Indian merchant. I believe 
nothing of the kind. He was a great philosopher, writer, and 
statesman (Scotland, and its Union with England, to wit), who 
never had any means of subsistence; for he was always improvident; 
he lived a life of usefulness to his country — but lived, as he died, 
without a shilling. 

When De Foe commences the date of his embarrassments I know 
not. I should suppose he would leave out of the reckoning the 
period when he carried on the pantile trade at Tilbury Fort, and 
kept his coach out of the profits. It is certain that Ned Ward, in 
his Dissenting Hypocrite, places him in Newgate as early as 1689 
(the year after William III. came as the deliverer of this country) , 
and in Newgate for debt ; for at the collection (as we have seen) in 
Dr. Daniel Burgess's chapel, it was given out, that Daniel wanted 
bread, and the collection for that bread was made accordingly. 



CHAPTER VI. 

In the Review for July 18, 1706, De Foe announces a work for 
publication on the following Saturday; and a caution is given 
against the octavo edition, which was pirated and brought out at 
the same time ; this work having been announced for publication 
so early as the year 1704, and subscriptions received on account of 
the work, and the work not appearing as announced, and partly 
subscribed for, great clamour was excited among the subscribers 
against the work, and against the author; and this was the folio 
poem against the divine right of kings, entitled Jure Divino. This 
work is voluminous and patriotic ; but poor, perhaps, in the art of 
poetry, as may be accounted for by the fact of his being a prisoner 
in Newgate for writing the Shortest Way with the Dissenters when 
it was composed ; and when his time must have been occupied with 
other subjects. 

We might readily believe that the jovial brutality of the felons' 
yard at Newgate was not exactly congenial to poetic inspiration on 
the rights of peoples, or the usurpations of monarchs. No ! but so 
it was. Jure Divino was written, for the most part, in Newgate, 
when De Foe was a prisoner there in 1 703 and 1 704 : and at a 
time when he was greatly occupied with the publication of his 
Review, and other works ; for at this time he was truly industrious, 
as his various works fully testify ; and on his release he was taken 
into diplomatic service by Harley, as a make-up, I suppose, for his 
forced neglect of his pamphleteer while confined in Newgate. He 
was liberated in the autumn of 1704; and in the following summer 
he was sent on some secret mission, fortified by govermental pass- 
ports, into dangerous if not foreign parts ; where he travelled under 
the assumed name of Mr. Christopher Hurt. On this dangerous 



310 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

secret service he was absent four months, somewhere — perhaps in 
Dorsetshire and Devonshire, taking an active part in the election. 

May we stop to inquire here, what could this mean? Harley 
sending De Foe among the freeholders of Dorsetshire and Devon- 
shire, to preach up liberalism and self-reliance. Harley had been 
three times elected Speaker of the House of Commons, and knew 
better than any living man, the construction and dependencies of 
that House. Harley dinnered himself into the Speaker's chair, and 
he dinnered himself likewise into the office of secretary of state. 
He knew the House well, and the expenses attending the keeping 
up a working majority from the members of the rotten boroughs ; 
and it might be convenient for a man as secretary of state to wish a 
House rather differently constituted, for his own safety or comfort, 
to that which he might require when an aspiring, turbulent, uneasy 
Speaker of the House of the Commons, where all the conceivable 
corruption might be profitable to him as a rising power ; and very 
depressing to the minister of the time, who had these men to pay 
or buy up. Be the cause what it may, De Foe was engaged by 
Harley, when secretary of state, to go into Dorsetshire and Devon- 
shire, to try to stem that torrent of High-Church jure-divino prin- 
ciples, which French gold had so fully cherished in the House of 
Commons during the whole reign of William III. ; even to the buy- 
ing up of 160 or more members by Cardinal Mazarin, the French 
minister, for the use and benefit of Louis XIV., his lord and master. 
Harley, when Speaker, set De Foe upon spreading these High- 
Church doctrines ; and when De Foe had turned out Lord Notting- 
ham, and placed Harley in his seat, then Harley, as minister, set 
De Foe upon undoing the very work he had previously set him upon. 

It was in the summer of 1705, that the elections took place 
throughout England; and this was the time when De Foe was "upon 
a journey about his lawful occasions," in Devonshire and the west 
of England, on an electioneering tour, and under the sanction or 
protection of government passports, to keep him from the prying 
annoyances of country justices. All these important missions pre- 
vented De Foe bringing out his important work, Jure Divino, so 
punctually as he had intended \ which caused considerable dissatis- 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



311 



faction amongst the subscribers to the work, who had paid their 
subscriptions for the work nearly two years before its appearance. 
As the work appeared at a time when De Foe was employed by 
Harley in electioneering, is it possible to suppose that Harley could 
have any hand in recommending this work to counteract principles 
which he found difficult to regulate as minister? Did Harley pro- 
cure De Foe to write Jure Divino ? 

It appears to have been the universal fashion of the time to run 
down the elaborate work, Jure Divino, and pronounce it to be a 
failure, even before it made its appearance from the press. Of this 
De Foe himself complains in a preface to a later edition. This cry 
was raised in 1 706 ; and it has been continued to our time without 
contradiction ; and the cry has even been taken up by some of De 
Foe's biographers, who have probably adopted it without any close 
investigation into the merits of the book ; which is really no failure 
at all, but is one of his best productions, and contains sentiments 
worthy of the best of the Seldens, Miltons, Boyles, Hampdens, or 
Sidneys. Jure Divino is a thoroughly patriotic work ; but published 
at a time, in a folio volume too ! when the divine right of kings 
stood higher in common public opinion than at any other time of 
our history; and, thanks to Louis XIV. of France for it ! — thanks 
to his money influencing public opinion in Britain into French 
principles, and French bondage ; for this bondage was the sole aim 
of the expenditure ; but, thanks also to the immortal Earl of Danby, 
frustrated by the skill of an English minister. 

I think this work so very good, that I shall give copious extracts 
from it; and, if I be wrong in my estimate of the work, I shall 
stand convicted by the same jury as the author. 

The title, Jure Divino, condemned the book, and not its contents ; 
but of this the public may judge : — 

" Preface . — This satire had never been published, though some 
of it has been a long time in being, had not the world seemed to be 
going mad a second time with the error of Passive Obedience and 
Non-resistance/ 3 — So much for preface ; the extract of forty valuable 
pages ; many of which ought at the time to have been printed in 
letters of gold. 



312 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

THE INTRODUCTION. 

Nature has left this tincture in the blood, 
That all men would be tyrants if they could ; 
If they forbear their neighbours to devour, 
'Tis not for want of ivill, but want of power. 
The general plague infects the very race, 
Pride in his heart, and tyrant in his face ; 
The characters are legible and plain, 
And perfectly describe the monster — Man. 

Nor can he otherwise be understood ; 
We 'd all be emperors ; His in the blood. 
Ambition knows no bounds, the meanest hand, 
If once let loose, would pow'r itself command ; 
Would storm the skies ; the Thund'rer there dethrone; 
Be universal lord; and call the world his own. 

The only safety of society, 

Is, that my neighbour 's just as proud as I; 

Has the same will and wish, the same design, 

And his abortive envy ruins mine. 

The epidemick frenzy has possest, 

By nature one, by nature all the rest. 

We 're all alike, we'd all ascend the skies ; 

All would be kings, all Icings would tyrannize; 

Sons would be fathers, fathers rule the states ; 

Servants be masters ; masters, magistrates; 

Ambition 's in the species of the man : 

He always will be master, if he can ; 

And his desire of rule so blinds his pride, 

He scorns to think himself unqualified. 

The strong unbounded lust of sovereign rule 
Makes him conceit the prince, forget the fool; 
The cobbler 's not so vile, despised a thing, 
But whisp'ring devils this delusion bring ; 
He fancies he could make a better king. 
The gen'ral taint infects the very kind, 
To lordship by eternal gust inclin'd ; 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 

The very breed must thus be understood, 
Nature has left the tincture in their blood. 

Thus, while he aims at gen'ral tyranny, 
Nothing 's so much a wretch, so much a slave as he . 
Damn'd to the bondage of mechanick vice, 
And meets new masters wheresoe'er he flies ; 
His reason bows before the feet of crime ; 
And lets th' infernal govern the sublime ; 
Cheats his loose judgment with the vile pretence, 
And worships idol-crime in spite of sense. 

A general slave to universal vice, 
So fond of chains, does so his fate despise ; 
He seems to own his slav'ry as his choice, 
And damns his freedom with subjected voice. 

Usurping hell, the sceptre of his mind, 
Has from all powers, but doing well, confined; 
A constant bondage bows his couchant neck, 
His will corrupted, and his judgment weak. 

Th' eternal drudge, the vilest crime obeys, 

And where his sense abhors, his will complies ; 

To all the meannesses of vice submits, 

And, though it shocks his reason, rules his wits ; 

A slave to strong involuntary crime, 

He rules the world, his passions govern him : 

Indwelling mischiefs crowd his abject soul, 

Debauched in part ; and tainted in the whole. 

Ambition flows in the degenerate seed ; 
Pride swells the heart, and avarice the head ; 
Envy sits regent in the growing spleen, 
And hypochondriack malice boils within ; 
Lust in his baser part obscurely lies, 
And rage and passion sparkle in his eyes ; 
His locomotive faculties obey, 
And organ pays allegiance to the tyranny ; 



313 



314 LIFE OE DE EOE. 

The hands obey the tyrant in the brain; 
Reason, when lust commands, resists in vain ; 
Unnatural heats o'er all the blood prevail ; 
This hour they rule the head, and next the tail : 
With arbitrary force the members guide, 
The feet to mischief, and the hands to blood. 

What strange extremes has Nature in her womb ? 

From what vast causes must such monsters come ? 

What strange, what wild, ungoverned things are men ? 

And who can all the devil of them explain ? 

Their pride directs them to usurping power, 

And would not only govern, but devour ; 

But if they can't tyrannic lust obtain, 

Because they can't be gods, they wont be men ; 

Abandon reason, let it act by halves, 

And, where they can't be tyrants, will be slaves. 

JURE DIVINO; 

A 

SATIRE. 

Then tell us, Satire, let thy lines explain 
What thing 's a tyrant ; 

Paint th' infernal man. 
His birth, his fortune, and his fate rehearse, 
No sinner can describe him like thy verse ; 
A monster form'd of all the shapes of sin, 
Something of man without, all devil within ; 
No phrase his sable mystery can unfold, 
His story must be felt, it can't be told. 

There Judas, mighty Judas, let him stand, 
With thirty shining stars in his exalted hand ; 
No man will his divinity refuse, 
Call him the patron-god of all the Jews ; 
Let him the god of treason too appear, 
And when he reigns, let honest men beware. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 315 

Whoe'er is in his constellation born, 

May storms and gibbets, swords and bullets, scorn ; 

So let the fates decree the wretched elves 

May always be assur'd to hang themselves. 

Peter the Cruel must stand fair for Spain, 
And great De Alva wait another train ; 
Cortez and he may for the place contend, 
And both shall have the poet for their friend. 
Spain has too fruitful been in men of blood, 
Who equally deserve the title of a god ; 
These are the heroes history extols, 
Who mount in flames of crime the heavenly walls ; 
Millions have fallen by their glorious hands, 
And by their breath, at once dispeopled lands. 

Prolific France might people all the skies, 
With villains qualified for deities. 
Eichlieu the new Apollo might have stood, 
But that his wit was mingled so with blood ; 
Let him the god of politics appear, 
And influence all the arts of peace and war ; 
Who in his government their birthday had, 
Will both be witty, bloody, wise, and mad. 

Ten mighty monarchs from the Gallic throne, 

For magnitude of crimes might struggle to be shown ; 

They 5 d all contend for room among the stars, 

And jostle one another from the spheres ; 

In equal vileness their high names excel, 

And in superior crimes, too black for hell. 

But by consent they all at once give way, 

And let immortal LEWIS [XIV.] come in play. 

His ancestor, whom money made a saint, 

And legends full of lies his glories paint, 

Shall willingly his lustre all resign, 

To help th' exalted wretch in orbs to shine, 

See the new growing constellation rise, 



316 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 

And with a train of tyrants mount the skies ; 

The ancestors of his immortal crimes, 

Blazon'd for heroes by the flattering rhymes 

Of antiquated poesy ; but now 

Sunk down below our praises, and below 

The dignity of high immortal verse ; 

We mightier deeds, in mightier lines rehearse. 

Behold the mighty Thunderer, and know, 

The azure arch can no such hero show ; 

The Great, th' Invincible, are names too small, 

To write his fame in letters capital ; 

A god 's the only title can explain, 

And suit the mighty, the immortal man. 

Great Jove shall vail his lesser majesty, 

And to his rising godship now give way ; 

His forked lightning he must now resign, 

The title may be his, the thunder 's thine ; 

Witness the ravag'd Belgice, and the plunder'd Rhine. 

If seas of blood, and mighty numbers slain ; 

If nations long oppress'd, if cries of men ; 

If devastation, cruelty, and death, 

And blasting nations with tyrannick breath ; 

If flaming towns, if ravish'd virtue lies, 

As steps to mount a monarch to the skies ; — 

LEWIS to reign above the gods may claim, 

And Jove resign his thunder and his name. 

Satire, look back, and search the world awhile, 
And find a patron-god for Albion's isle ; 
Britannia must not all alone remain, 
Without one star in the celestial train ; 
Has she so many tyrants borne in vain ? 

Satire, thy country's glory now pursue ; 

If other lands have one, let thine have two; l 

Step back two ages, and exalt on high, 

Great James [I.] the modern Bacchus of the sky. 

1 The notoriously dissolute Lord Rochester being the other. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 317 

But give him time, before his ghost appear, 

Lest his uneasy fame bewray his fear : 

Let him be patron of the timorous race, 

Fear in the head, and frenzy in the face ; 

His constellation, where it 's felt beneath, 

Will make men strive to die for fear of death. 

See how we worship in his house of sin, 

His exaltation with his crimes begin ; 

Aloft, 1 we view the bacchanalian King ; 

Below, 2 the sacred anthems daily sing. 

His vast excess the pencil art displays, 

And triumphs in the clouds above our praise ; 

What can with equal force devotion move ? 

We pray below, and he's debauched above. 

The drunken monarch all our prayers defies, 

And boldly revels in th' exalted skies. 

Satire, thy justice cannot well deny, 

T' exalt him here, that 's there set up so high. 

Art had thy verse anticipated there, 

And, godlike, placed the monarch in the air. 

Satire, go back no further, leave a space 

For future heroes of sublimer race ; 

Content thyself with these ; let all men try 

To find out such another galaxy. 

These shall thy class of modern gods complete, 

And these alone enjoy the shining seat, 

Too vile for heaven, and for the world too great. 

If any ask thee what high place remains, 
And what bright orb thy William's [III.] star contains, 
Tell 'em that he who pull'd down tyrants here, 
Proclaims eternal wars against them there ; 

1 The paintings on the ceilings in the Banqueting House represent all manner 
of bacchanalian excesses, and the King frequently crowned with the triumphs of 
drunkenness. 

2 The place now turned into a chapel royal, and the divine service sung by the 
choir of the household. 



318 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Tell 'em he scorns the fiction of divine, 

And lives an age's voyage beyond their line ; 

There he 's a god indeed, for th' heavenly face 

Gives high similitude to the immortal race ; 

There he possesses infinite, complete, 

Whom here he could no more than imitate ; 

A guard of glorious lights form'd his ascent, 

And wond'ring stars ador'd him as he went ; 

The planetary gods, eclips'd and fled, 

Resign' d their light and vail'd the guilty head ; 

Superior glory lighten'd all the way, 

With beams shot out from everlasting day ; 

Harmonious music, form'd in choirs of love, 

From the immortal symphony above, 

In charming measures all his actions sung, 

And with seraphic anthems mov'd along. 

Thus William went, I saw the saint ascend, 

And sympathetic^ joy did optick powers extend : 

I saw th' exalted hero at the gate, 

My soul went up with him ; 'tis hardly come back yet. 

Wonder no more, new raptures fire my pen, 

When William's name I chance to write ; and when 

I search the lustre of his memory ; 

The best of monarchs, and of men to me. 

Here I must pause, not from choice, but necessity. The work 
is so good, and completely to my taste, that I could quote page after 
page, so as even to tire out the patience of the most docile reader, 
not thoroughly bound mind and body to the principle, that a free- 
holder — a British freeholder, was a title more ancient and more 
sacred than that of king. This was Daniel De Foe's inspired prin- 
ciple of belief; and, if it would not be too much presumption to 
apply the same terms to myself, I would humbly hope, His mine. 

If any right directed in this choice, 
' 'Twas property obtain'd the gen'ral voice; 
He had the justest title to command, 
Whose property prevail'd and own'd the land. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 319 

And so elective power commenced its reign, 

Where equal right of property began. 

The land divided, right to rule divides, 

And universal suffrage then provides ; 

The government lay in the general voice, 

They only had the power that had the choice ; 

The undisputed right is plainly traced, 

Where Nature first had due possession plac'd. 

Thus the collective body of a land, 

In right of property, had power contain'd, 

And all original right with them remain' d. 

They had the right, because the land 's their own, 

And property 's the basis of a throne ; 

He that had all the land, had all the power ; 

The property, the title must secure ; 

If he enjoy 'd in common with the rest, 

While right remains in common, title must ; 

No man can claim a power of government, 

Where they that own the land will not consent. 

If any single man possess this land, 

And had the right, he must have the command ; 

If once he was but landlord of the isle, 

He must be king, because he own'd the soil; 

No man his just succession could dispute ; 

He must both make the laws and execute ; 

No laws could ever be on him impos'd ; 

His claim of right, the people's claim foreclos'd; 

And he that would not to his rule submit, 

Must quit the place, the place was all his right. 

From this just title men might fairly plead, 

Divine succession has a sacred head ; 

For right of property 's a sacred law : 

Nature consents, and reason 's kept in awe ; 

All the just bonds of government in man, 

In this foundation's principle began ; 

Here only right hereditary lies, 

Succession 's born of this, and with it dies ; 

This is divine, and from the first of time, 

Bv this one title God himself lavs claim ; 



320 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

He rules the world, because the world 's his own ; 
And by this claim, first government began ; 
By this the power descends ; by this 'tis just ; 
For where the land 's our own, the kingdom must. 
Wherever Providence transplants a nation, 
"The government goes alioays with possession." 

Blest are the days, and wing'd with joy they fly, 

When monarchs join in subject's liberty ; 

When settled peace in stated order reigns, 

And nor the people, nor the king complains ; 

In juster measures both alike combine, 

And mutual interest mutual methods join. 

Tis then the happy nations bless the crown ; 

Tis then the happy monarchs rule their own ; 

No title 's equal to the people's hearts, 

When every branch of power enjoys their proper parts ; 

Encroachments and oppressive arts unknown, 

Kings first support the people ; they the crown ; 

The ends of government in both agree > 

And these grow great, but just as those grow free : 

And in that very freedom they assent 

To all the essential rules of government. 

Thus legal monarchy in triumph reigns, 

And all the arts of tyranny disdains ; 

Eevolving years have crusht the vile design, 

Just princes now with free-born subjects join ; 

The governing and governed agree : 

Those gently rule, these willingly obey ; 

The equal scale of government depends : 

These like the means, and those approve the ends. 

Unbiass'd hands the beam of justice hold, 

And power's iron age is turn'd to gold. 

We must next take the Union of the two Kingdoms — England 
and Scotland, and see what part De Foe took in that important 
national work. 

In October, 1706,, De Foe arrived in Edinburgh along with the 



LIFE OF DE FOE, 321 

English Commissioners for treating on the terms on which England 
and Scotland should be united as one kingdom : the Parliament for 
arranging the terms assembling in Edinburgh on Oct. 4, 1706. 

That De Foe took great interest in this movement is certain, from 
the fact of his having published several essays, in Scotland alone, 
for the removal of national prejudices ; besides what he did from 
day to day in his Review, and two or three tracts published in Lon- 
don in the same year, as " The Advantages of the Act of Security, 
compared with those of the intended Union ; founded on the Revo- 
lution Principles. By D. De Foe, London : 1706. 4 to." Again : 
" An Essay at Removing National Prejudices against a Union with 
Scotland. To be continued during the Treaty here. Part I. London, 
printed in the year 1706. 4to, pp. 30." Five other parts suc- 
ceeded this, in this and the early part of the succeeding year. 

We have seen, in the early summer of the year 1705, De Foe 
writing. a long letter to Harley on some mysterious journey, for 
which he was buying horses, and fortifying himself by governmental 
documents, passports, credentials, or certificates ; and immediately 
afterwards we find him in the west of England, Dorsetshire, Devon- 
shire, &c, taking an active part in enlightening the freeholders, so 
as to make an improvement on the worst House of Commons that 
ever sat in the English metropolis; for such was the House of 1704, 

As Harley and Godolphin were among the twenty-seven English 
Commissioners, and as Daniel De Foe, from Stoke Newington, near 
London, was also there, employed on some undefined, though im- 
portant and secret services ; it is more than probable that the two 
ministers above named carried him to Edinburgh to write up the 
cause, draw up reports, and make financial calculations, tedious, 
difficult, and voluminous. The appointment, whatever it might be, 
was so important as to be acknowledged by the Queen, who allowed 
the honour of an introduction and a kissing of the royal hand, upon 
the appointment to the office ; of, perhaps, financial calculator, or 
edger-off of financial bargains, between two nations, both north, and 
keen higglers. Perhaps a better choice could not have been made ; 
for De Foe was ready at the pen, either for calculations in figures, 
or calculations in plausibilities; for if some egregious error had 

21 



322 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

been committed (inadvertently, of course), so as to frighten the 
cautious Scotch; a pamphlet would have been thrown upon the 
reading public, well written and unanswerable, in a few hours ; so 
that all cause for alarm or jealousy would be hushed at once, for 
that time ; and so afford calm for future progress in negotiation, for 
completion of a bargain, the good effects of which would last so long 
as the words, England and Scotland, continued to be known in the 
language of civilized man. 

What those services were is not denned ; but he adds : — " I had 
the happiness to discharge myself in all these trusts so much to the 
satisfaction of those who employed me, though oftentimes with 
difficulty and danger, that my Lord Treasurer Godolphin, whose 
memory I have always honoured, was pleased to continue his favour 
to me, and to do me all good offices to her Majesty, even after an 
unhappy breach had separated him from my first benefactor." 

The project of an Union between these two Kingdoms was no 
new one with De Foe ; for he had once named it to the late King 
William III., who saw the importance of the measure, but dare not 
engage in it, on account of the insurmountable difficulties from time, 
St. Germains, and the temper of the people ; for he only replied, " I 
have done all I can in that affair ; but I do not see a temper in either 
nation that looks like it ;" and added, after some other discourse — 
" It may be done, but not yet/' 

As this subject is very important, in an estimate of the value of 
the sagacity and patriotism of De Foe, I consider it to be an impe- 
rative duty imposed upon me, regardless of all censure, to show 
the honourable part which the energetic, uncompromising, honest 
Daniel De Foe took in bringing about the union of the two king- 
doms, England and Scotland. We have seen this man in Newgate, 
and on a pillory platform, for his principles ; - and we will try if we 
cannot place him — no ! his statue, on some pedestal of honour, in 
some obscure corner of Britain's sanctuary. 

I will quote freely from his History of the Union : — 

" I cannot forbear hinting here, that my curiosity pressed me to 
take a journey thither, and being by all my friends, to whom I 
communicated my design, encouraged to think I might be useful 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 323 

there, to prompt a work that I was fully convinced was for the 
general good of the whole island ; and particularly necessary for the 
strengthening the Protestant interest ; I was moved purely on these 
accounts to undertake a long winter, a chargeable, and, as it proved, 
hazardous journey. I contemn, as not worth mentioning, the sug- 
gestions of some people, of my being employed thither, to carry on 
the interest of a party. I have never loved any parties, but with my 
utmost zeal have sincerely espoused the great and original interest 
of this nation, and of all nations : I mean truth and liberty; and 
whoever are of that party, I desire to be with them. However, by 
this journey I had the opportunity of seeing and hearing all the 
particulars of the following transactions, and of using my best 
endeavours to answer the many, many, and I must say of some of 
them, the most frivolous and ridiculous objections, formed and im- 
proved there with great industry, against every article of the Union ; 
and this is my reason for mentioning it here, that I may acquaint 
posterity how I came to the knowledge of what I write ; and for no 
ostentation at all; and, as I had the honour to be frequently sent 
for into the several committees of Parliament, which were appointed 
to state some difficult points relating to equalities, taxes, prohibi- 
tions, &c. ; 'tis for those gentlemen to say, whether I was useful or 
not ; that is none of my business here ; but by this means I have 
the greater assurance to relate the circumstances and fact as it stood 
before them, and cannot be afraid of being detected in any material 
mistake. And as this is the reason of my making any mention of 
myself, so the reader cannot but be content to know, from what 
foundation this relation is handed down to posterity ; and what 
assurance he has, that the author he reads was capable of giving 
him a right state of the matter." 

With respect to his work of calculating the relative proportions 
of excise or custom duties of every conceivable article of commerce, 
to be borne by each nation ; so that no possible overreach could by 
design or mistake be perpetrated on the other ; for all these items 
were weighed and discussed by national, interested, bigoted oppo- 
nents, who seized every calculation with a hostile feeling, with all 
the desperation of men who seize any pretext, however trivial, to 

21* 



324 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

create a misunderstanding among the treaters or negotiators ; so as 
to break np the conference altogether, and thus save the honour of 
their devoted country, about to be lost to all true Scots — for ever ; 
for in this business negotiating in Edinburgh, Scotland was to lose, 
and England to gain — everything. On this business De Foe adds — 

" That while it was thought well done to have a share in stating 
the proportions of the excise, several persons pretended to the title 
of being the first contrivers of it ; but when afterwards, on some 
clamour raised upon the inequalities of the proportions, the con- 
trivers began to be blamed, and a little threatened a-la-mob ; then 
it was De Foe made it all, and he was to be stoned for it ; and 
afterward, when those differences, appearing but trifles, were, by the 
prudence of the Commissioner, reconciled, they would willingly have 
reassumed the honour of being the first formers of this affair." 

During the negotiations of the Commissioners of both nations, 
the Duke of Hamilton was the most conspicuous for his opposition 
to the whole project; and in consequence became the especial 
darling of the street mobs of Edinburgh, and received his tribute in 
kind on his way to and from the Parliament House, especially on 
the return from the House, when his Grace's carriage was followed 
by the enthusiastic cheers of exulting thousands; while the whole 
wrath and execration of this excited multitude, inflamed and en- 
raged to the last degree, was poured upon his Grace James Duke of 
Queensberry, her Majesty's High Commissioner for negotiating this 
delicate adjustment of national rights, interests, and prejudices — 
the man upon whose judgment and prudence hung the success of 
the whole negotiation. This has been affirmed by De Foe in his 
dedication of his History of the Union to his Grace ; and also in a 
more important place, the House of Lords, by her Majesty from the 
throne ; when addressing both Houses of Parliament on the auspi- 
cious event — the completion of the Union of the Kingdoms of Eng- 
land and Scotland. The greatest popular excitement had existed 
for some days in the streets of Edinburgh ; but — 

" On the 22nd of October, they followed the Duke's (Hamilton) 
chair quite through the city, down to the Abbey gate ; the guards 
prevented their going further ; but all the way as they came back, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 325 

they were heard to threaten what they would do the next day ; that 
then they would be a thousand times as many; that they would 
pull the traitors (for so they called the treaters of Union at London) 
out of their houses, and that they would soon put an end to the 
Union. 

" On the 23rd, they made part of their words good indeed ; for, 
as the Parliament sat something late, the people gathered in the 
streets, and about the doors of the Parliament House, and, particu- 
larly, the Parliament Close was almost full, that the members could 
not go in or out without difficulty : when the Duke of Hamilton 
coming out of the House, the mob huzzaed as formerly, and followed 
his chair in a very great number. The Duke, instead of going down 
to the Abbey, as usual, went up to High Street, to the Lawn Market, 
as they call it, and so to the lodgings of the Duke of Athol. Some 
said he went to avoid the mob : others maliciously said he went to 
point them to their work. While he went into the Duke of Athol's 
lodging, the rabble attended at the door ; and by shouting and noise, 
having increased their numbers to several thousands, they began 
with Sir Patrick Johnston, who was one of the treaters, and the 
year before had been lord provost ; first they assaulted his lodgings 
with stones and sticks, and curses not a few ; but, his windows 
being too high, they came up stairs to his door, and fell to work at 
it with sledges, or great hammers ; and, had they broken it open in 
their first fury, he had without doubt been torn in pieces without 
mercy ; and this only because he was a treater in the Commission 
to England; for, before that, no man was so well beloved as he, 
over the whole city. 

" His lady, in the utmost despair with this fright, came to the 
window with two candles, one in each hand, that she might be 
known ; and cried out, for God's sake, to call the guards. An honest 
apothecary in the town, who knew her voice, and the distress she 
was in, and to whom the family, under God, is obliged for their 
deliverance, ran immediately down to the guard ; but they would 
not stir without the Lord Provost's order; but that being soon 
obtained, one Captain Richardson, who commanded, taking about 
thirty men with him, marched bravely up to them ; and making his 



326 LIVE OF DB FOE. 

way with great resolution through the crowd, they flying, but 
throwing stones, and hallooing at him and his men, he seized the 
foot of the staircase, and then boldly went up, cleared the stair, and 
took six of the rabble in the very act ; and so delivered the gentle- 
man and his family. 

" But this did not put a stop to the general tumult, though it 
delivered this particular family ; for the rabble by this time were 
prodigiously increased, and went roving up and down the town, 
breaking the windows of the members of Parliament, and insulting 
them in their coaches in the streets; they put out all the lights, 
that they might not be discovered j and the author of this [Daniel 
De Foe] had one great stone thrown at him, for but looking out of 
a window ; for they suffered nobody to look out, especially with 
any lights, lest they should know faces, and inform against them 
afterwards. 

" By this time it was about eight or nine o'clock at night ; and 
now they were absolute masters of the city ; and it was reported, 
they were going to shut up all the ports ; the Lord Commissioner 
being informed of that, sent a party of the foot-guards, and took 
possession of the Nether Bow, which is a gate in the middle of 
the High Street, as Temple Bar between the city of London and the 
court. The city was now in a terrible fright, and everybody was 
under concern for their friends ; the rabble went raving about the 
streets till midnight, frequently beating drums, and raising more 
people ; when my Lord Commissioner being informed there were a 
thousand of the seamen and rabble come up from Leith; and appre- 
hending, if it were suffered to go on, it might come to a dangerous 
head, and be out of his power to suppress, he sent for the Lord 
Provost, and demanded that the guards should march into the city. 
The Lord Provost, after some difficulty, yielded, though it was 
alleged that it was what never was known in Edinburgh before. 
About one o'clock in the morning a battalion of the guards entered 
the town, marched up to the Parliament Close, and took post in all 
the avenues of the city ; which prevented the resolutions taken to 
insult the houses of the rest of the treaters. The rabble were 
entirely reduced by this, and gradually dispersed; and so the 
tumult ended ." 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 327 

" They had been tampering with the soldiery, in order to debauch 
them from their duty ; and some people talked of retiring from the 
Parliament, and of some great men heading the people ; which, had 
their patience been more, and their conduct a little more secret, 
they had, without doubt, effectually brought it to pass ; but they 
blew their own project up by their precipitation, and so saved their 
country by their very attempt to destroy it. 

" The author of this [Daniel De Foe] had his share of the danger 
of this tumult ; and, though unknown to him, was watched and set 
by the mob, in order to know where to find him ; had his chamber 
windows insulted, and the windows below him broken by mistake. 
But by the prudence of his friends, the shortness of its continuance, 
and God's providence, he escaped. 

u Several of the rabble were seized upon and apprehended ; and 
there was a discourse of making examples of some of them ; but the 
mercy of the High Commissioner (his Grace the Duke of Queens- 
berry), however provoked and abused, prevailed to compassionate, 
rather than punish, their follies." 

This James Duke of Queensberry was one of that noble phalanx 
of aristocracy left by William III. for the protection of his poor, 
credulous, good-natured, priest-ridden successor and sister-in-law, 
Anne. " This gentleman commanded a regiment of horse at the 
Revolution ; left King James, at the same time, with the Duke of 
Ormond ; and joined the Prince of Orange, who made him gentle- 
man of his bedchamber and captain of the Scots troop of Guards; 
and towards the end of King William's reign he had the Garter ; 
was made secretary of state for that kingdom (Scotland), and com- 
missioner of that Parliament." — Macky's MS. 

Such were the stirring events accompanying the birth of the 
greatest blessing which .could have befallen this United Kingdom. 
I should not have waded through such a scene of riot and confusion, 
had I not seen the necessity of doing it, in order to show that Daniel 
De Foe was not the mere ambidexter mercenary tool of party, 
which certain mean contemporaries of the pen have pretended; 
who, whatever they might possess in power of penmanship, never 
thought proper to risk their skins in Edinburgh in a critical time, 



328 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

to see how they could act the character of patriot, and work in 
that character, without being paid. 

At this time De Foe published his Caledonia, a poem in honour 
of Scotland and the Scots nation, in three parts ; Edinburgh, 170G ; 
folio, pp. 60 : — 

In northern heights, where Nature seldom smiles, 

Embrac'd with seas, and buttrest round with isles ; 

Where lofty shores regard th' adjacent pole ; 

Where winds incessant blow, and waves incessant roll ; 

First youngest sister to the frozen zone, 

Batter'd by parent Nature's constant frown ; 

Adapt to hardships, and cut out for toil ; 

The best worst climate, and the worst best soil; 

A rough, unhewn, uncultivated spot, 

Of old so fain d, and so, of late, forgot ; 

Neglected Scotland shews her awful brow, 

Not always quite so near to heaven as now. 

Circled with dreadful clifts and barbarous shores, 

Where the strong surf, with high impetuous roars, 

Invades the rocks ; and these their rage disdain, 

And with redoubling noise they 're hurried home again ; 

The hollow caverns mutual roars return, 

And baffled Neptune, raging, makes the ocean burn. 

There equally they floating worlds defy, 

Bid them stand off and live, advance and die ; 

The hardy wretch, that sees the hint too late, 

Fails not to find his folly in 



This opportune work of conciliation to a wounded nationality, was 
dedicated, in all fairness, to her Majesty's High Commissioner, the 
Duke of Queensberry, who gave the exclusive privilege of selling 
this poem for the term of seven years, to Daniel De Foe, Esquire. 

It appears that De Foe remained in Edinburgh during the whole 
year 1707, and devoted all his powers of pen during that year to 
conciliate the Scottish nation ; for, besides his Scottish pamphlets, 
he did nothing, except completing his third volume of the Review, 
and commencing his fourth volume. 



LIFE OE DE EOE. 329 

After the completion of the Union of the two Kingdoms, all the 
small fry of carpers, headed by Leslie, were set upon De Foe, to 
write him down, and insult him, by dragging him through the refuse 
of their verbal Billingsgate. He had been to Scotland — sent there 
by a party, or, as he expresses it in his Review for Sept. 2, 1707 — 
" I have, for a long time, patiently borne with the scurrilous prints 
and scandalous reproaches of the streets, concerning my being in 
Scotland. To-day I am sent thither by one party, to-morrow by 
another; this time by one particular person; that, by a body of 
people; by some one way, by others another; and I have long 
waited to see if, out of innumerable guesses, they wouJd at last make 
a discovery of the true, and, to me, melancholy reason of settling 
myself in a remote corner of the world ; which, if they had done, I 
should, no question, have been insulted enough upon that head. 
But since their guesses have too much party malice in them to be 
right, though there are five or six persons in London who can not 
only give a true account of my removal, but recall me from this 
banishment, if they had humanity in them a degree less than an 
African lion ; I, therefore, cannot but take up a little room in these 
papers about my own case. There are two sorts of people out of 
reach by the world : those that are above, and those that are below 
it ; and they may be equally happy, for aught I know. Of the last 
sort I reckon myself; and declare, that as I am below their envy, 
so I seek not their pity. I am, I bless God, secure in my retreat 
from their fury ; and am fully revenged of the world by despising 
all the contempt it can throw upon me." 

It would appear from the above, and a good deal more written 
about this time (1707), that De Foe had gone to Scotland as a 
volunteer helper to the Commission constituting the English party; 
and that he worked day and night in the national ranks, but never 
received any pay for his services. This may be gathered from his 
Review, published at the time, when Harley and Godolphin, his 
patrons, were both in power, and able to frown him into truthful- 
ness, if they had paid him for his services in Scotland. He certainly 
worked hard enough, among other workers ; and yet he repeatedly 
declares, that he never had received any pay or remuneration for his 



330 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

services when in Scotland ; and he was there twelve months. His 
stay in the North was prolonged beyond the period required for 
the national business; but that was to keep out of the way of his 
creditors in London. This he admits when glorying in the security 
of his retreat. 'Tis true, De Foe's name does not appear as attached 
to the Commission in the capacity of secretary, accountant, clerk, 
or messenger ; but he was there, acknowledged by the Commission, 
and worked by them; but unpaid. These declarations of unpaid 
services are not idle boasts, but truths extorted by malignant, 
unscrupulous opponents, who worried him into the declaration by 
their constant attacks on his mercenary conduct and paid party 
services : some averring that the English Presbyterians had sent 
him to protect their brethren north of the Tweed. I wonder whether 
they thought Mr. John Howe's congregation had sent him, to get 
rid of his opposition to their long-spoon-and-custard usages on lord 
mayor's day ! 

" If I have been sent hither, as you say, I have been most bar- 
barously treated; for I profess solemnly, I have not yet had one 
penny of my wages, nor the least consideration for the time set 
apart in this service ; nor, had I had the good fortune to have my 
brains knocked out by the high-flying mob here, do I see any pro- 
spect of having been canonized as a martyr for the cause ; or of 
having my name inserted in the Presbyterian Kalendar. The utmost 
I expect is, what I have met with : — ( What business had he with 
it ? What had he to do there ? Who sent him V and the like." 

After an absence of sixteen months, De Foe returned to London 
in 1 708, in the month of January ; and received from the ministers 
some appointment under the government, with a fixed salary; this 
was done through the influence of Harley ; and the appointment 
was kept by De Foe after Harley seceded from the ministry; 
though, when Godolphin took De Foe's department in the adminis- 
tration, he forgot to pay Daniel his salary ; and the appointment, so 
far as wages go, appears to have died out through neglect. 

In the month of February, 1708, Harley was dismissed from 
the ministry by the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Godolphin, and 
certain leading Whigs about the court, for intriguing with the 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 331 

Queen through Mrs. Masham, his relative; who was bedchamber 
woman to the Queen, and cousin to the Duchess of Marlborough, 
whom she supplanted in the Queen's affections. All this was a 
source of great consternation to De Foe ; for Harley had been his 
especial patron since the overthrow of the Earl of Nottingham's 
secretary-of-stateship by De Foe's Shortest Way with the Dis- 
senters; at whose instigation alone, I firmly believe, that much- 
misrepresented though powerful tract was written. As for the 
leading Whigs, they were not much in the habit of employing 
writers; for some of them were political writers of a very high 
order, and did not require the assistance of such talents as De 
Foe's ; of this class was Lord Somers, William's honest friend and 
minister. Harley was an ambitious and intriguing man ; one who 
could use De Foe's talents to some purpose or other, as he could use 
the stomachs of half the members of the House of Commons, to 
procure his election to the Speakership in three Parliaments, which 
made him valuable as a cabinet minister ; he having that stomach 
gauge of a very ordinary quality of House of Commons, which a 
better class of statesmen would not care to make himself master of. 
The thorough command of the bowels of the House of Commons 
elevated Harley to a seat in the cabinet. 

After the first alarm had subsided, De Foe, through the recom- 
mendation of the late Secretary of State, Harley, under whose 
immediate patronage he considered himself to be placed, waited 
upon the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, and was graciously received ; 
he observing, with a smile, that he had not seen him of a long while. 
De Foe explained his position with the late minister as well as he 
could, and evidently to the satisfaction of the Lord Treasurer, who 
introduced him a second time to her Majesty, whose gracious hand 
he was allowed to kiss, on the continuance of the place or appoint- 
ment enjoyed by him under the late minister; who had always been 
considered as the head of that particular department. This con- 
tinuation of an office or employment was granted in consideration 
of former services of a special nature; which De Foe had successfully 
carried out, though, as he says, running as much risk of his life as 
a grenadier upon the counterscarp. Where could he have been? 



332 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

in Devonshire, at Exeter assizes ? — Scotland ? — Edinburgh ? — in the 
Highlands, or at St. Germains? — the court of the Pretender? — who 
knows ? He had been somewhere, and — for Harley the late minister, 
and at the imminent risk of his life ! 

On this occasion her Majesty informed De Foe that she had 
received such satisfaction in his former services, that she had ap- 
pointed him to another office — a better office, but of that the Lord 
Treasurer would give him the particulars ; and on this he withdrew. 

The next day his lordship ordered De Foe to attend npon him, 
when he stated that he must go to Scotland immediately, and leave 
London in three days on his journey. He went as ordered, and at 
the time too, for Scotland ; but what the business was, has never 
transpired ; and of course, now, after the lapse of a century and a 
quarter, never will. 

" And yet my errand was such as was far from being unfit for a 
sovereign to direct, or an honest man to perform ; and the service I 
did upon that occasion, as it is not unknown to the greatest man 
now in the nation, under the King and the Prince ; so I dare say, 
his Grace was never displeased with the part I had in it, and I hope 
will not forget it. 

" These things I mention, upon this account, and no other, viz., 
to state the obligation I have been in all along to her Majesty per- 
sonally, and to my first benefactor principally ; by which I say, I 
think I was at least obliged not to act against them, even in those 
things which I might not approve. Whether I have acted with 
them further than I ought, shall be spoken to by itself. Having 
said thus much of the obligations laid on me, and the persons by 
whom, I have this only to add, that I think no man will say, a sub- 
ject could be under greater bonds to his prince, or a private person 
to a minister of state ; and I shall even preserve this principle, that 
an honest man cannot be ungrateful to his benefactor." 

On the prospect of a threatened invasion from France at this 
time, De Foe published a short tract, entitled the Union Proverb, 
viz. : — 

If Skiddaw has a cap, 
Scruffell wots full well of that. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 333 

" Setting forth — 1st, The necessity of uniting ; 2ndly, the good con- 
sequences of uniting; 3rdly, The happy union of England and 
Scotland, in case of a foreign invasion. Felix quern faciuni aliena 
pericula cautum. London, 1708." 

"To the true British reader, Skiddaw and Scruffell are two 
neighbouring hills, or high mountains : the one in Cumberland, in 
England; the other in Annandale, in Scotland ; and, if the former 
happen at any time to be capped with clouds or foggy mists, it will 
not be long ere rain, or the like, fall on the latter. It is also spoken 
of such who must expect to sympathize in their sufferings by reason 
of the vicinity of their habitations. 

" It is an excellent lecture of mutual friendship on either side of 
the Tweed. It ingenuously tells us, what we are to trust to in 
troublesome times, either of oppression at home, or of miscarriage, 
affliction, and misfortune, from abroad. It is, likewise, a most 
politic and prudent caution against foreign invasions. It does 
not only, and that pathetically too, set forth the necessity of the 
two kingdoms uniting heartily in all cases of disastrous disturbance, 
but also manifestly shows the happy consequences of such an entire 
union, both in point of government and traffic, as will be able to 
defeat the turbulent designs of our greatest enemies, either in time 
of peace or of war. This is the main stock on which our common 
hopes ought to be grafted, of making Great Britain nourish and 
fructify in spite of French blasts or caterpillars/' 



CHAPTER VII. 

On the 31st of March, 1709, De Foe closed his fifth volume of the 
Review, after it had attained to 158 numbers; which appeared three 
times in each week. Now, it may be expected that I should go 
into the merits of the several articles, with all the answers from 
Tories of all grades, both in England, Scotland, and Ireland — 
Charles Leslie, the nonjuror divine, taking the lead in prose; and 
Ned Ward or Tom Browne bringing up the rear in poetic effusions ; 
and among the crowd of mean worshippers of power stands Dean 
Swift, witty and unprincipled: a man to be execrated as its repre- 
sentative for servile meanness, so long as the English language 
shall be a means of communication between one individual of our 
species and another. Swift ! — Swift the contemptible, must join in 
the crowd of detractors, and speak of De Foe. Swift, the Dean of 
St. Patrick's, to speak contemptuously of Daniel De Foe ! 

Well, suffice to say, that the fifth volume of De Foe's Review was, 
for the most part, taken up in allaying the storm ecclesiastic raised 
by the Presbyterians with their fears of subjection, and by the Epis- 
copalians with their hopes of ruling over God's heritage in Scotland. 
The Act of Union stirred up the old religious party feelings of 
Scotland from the very dregs ; and De Foe undertook the task, to 
allay the storm ; and this chiefly in his Review, and more especially 
in the fifth volume. 

At this time, many thousands of poor persecuted Germans sought 
refuge in England from the exactions of the French, and were, for 
convenience or necessity, encamped about Blackheath, to the num- 
ber of ten thousand, and supplied with tents and subsistence from 
the government, and the collections made in all the churches, in aid 
of these poor outcasts, by means of a brief. This kind treatment of 
the unfortunate added to the supply, till government were compelled 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 335 

to stop its benevolence. Of course, such an importation of water- 
cress hawkers in our streets would cause great alarm among the 
unskilled labourers of the metropolis ; and there would be a great 
cry of ruin to our land, from the staid, quiet, safe politicians of the 
day, who work upon scripture principles, of the evil of the day being 
sufficient to it ; so make no hoarding of fusty trash in the mind ; 
but buy their politics, as they buy their bread, smoking hot, from 
the leading article of their daily newspaper. Against this inoffen- 
sive class De Foe had to work in his Review ; and bring up his 
supplies of political- economic information from the stores of Sir 
Josiah Child, Thomas Main, and others, the great precursors of 
Adam Smith, the organizer of the dismembered limbs of the great, 
the glorious system of vitality — Political Economy. De Foe had to 
write free trade in the summer of 1709; and such free trade as 
Richard Cobden, John Bright, George Wilson, and others, enun- 
ciated from the platform of the Free-trade Hall, in Manchester, one 
hundred and thirty years afterwards. 

« Were the nation so full of people, as that the corn and cattle 
could not feed them, it would be still better. The Dutch plough no 
land, and sow no seed, comparatively speaking ; yet they have no 
want. Sowing corn is far from being the best improvement of land, 
as is apparent in England, where ploughed lands, even in the most 
fruitful parts, are the least valuable." 

In the month of October of this year, the grand jury presented 
his Review, for his independence in writing freely upon the Episco- 
palian usurpations upon the Established Presbyterian Church of 
Scotland. 

In reading the secret history of Arlus and Adolphus, chief minis- 
ters of state to the Empress of Grand Insula, I find that Harley and 
Sacheverell share the sympathy of the writer ; and that to Marl- 
borough, Godolphin, and their party, the Quinquinvirate, the term 
of reproach, Leveller, is very freely applied. The spirit of this 
pamphlet and its associations have caused me to ask myself, whether 
Dr. Sacheverell, in 1709 and 1710, might not be instrumental in 
playing the same game, for the same purpose, for Harley, that De 
Foe played for the same man in 1703 — the breaking-up the admi- 



336 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

nistration of Lord Godolphin, and the reinstating Harley in power? 
And I ask also, is not Harley the writer of this tract ? I believe 
he is. Sacheverell was tried in 1710, and the trial occupied twenty 
days ; and this is affirmed in the tract, which was printed directly 
after that trial, and in the same year, but without a printer's name 
being affixed to it. Why this? As the tract is curious, and even 
states, "that Harley had long foreseen and expected to consum- 
mate his meritorious scheme of redeeming his sovereign from the 
private ambition of a few men, by turning the stream of government 
into its proper channel, and by this important crisis." There was 
in the country such an amount of bigotry and priestly domination, 
and High-Church jure-divino religion, the wreck of the Reformation 
of Henry VIII., Mary, and Elizabeth; and the Stuarts; for they 
too, with their Sunday books of sports, and Maypole dancing, re- 
formed religion in their way ; that a crafty, disappointed, ambitious 
statesman, like Robert Harley, would well know that the ashes of 
the Reformation fire, supposed to have been dead out three or more 
generations, only wanted a good wind or active bellows to fan up 
the embers into a hot white glow, to consume all the combustibles 
within its reach. The Whigs were in power, supported by the great 
mercantile or moneyed interest of the nation — the dissenters ; and 
so, to remove them, the church drum must be beaten, to the 
threatened destruction of all national institutions, by a brutalized 
populace being let loose upon the land ! But this must be checked 
— it must be crushed in the bud ; yes, and at once ; but by whom ? 
TheWliigs? Whigs? Levellers? Atheists? Destructives? Whigs? 
Why ! the church is in danger ; and what Whig can save a falling 
church? The church was falling, and Robert Harley knew well 
that our side only could prop it. Harley knew this, and promptly 
acted upon the knowledge, as he had done in 1704, when he threw 
out of office the Earl of Nottingham, and took the place vacated, 
himself. He did this in 1704, by Daniel De Eoe writing for him 
the book entitled the Shortest Way with the Dissenters. He now, 
in 1709, repeats the trick, by the writings of Charles Leslie and 
Swift, with Pope, and the preaching of Dr. Sacheverell ; and thus 
removes from place and power the Lord High Treasurer, the Earl 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 337 

Godolphin, in order to place himself minister on the wreck of Earl 
Godolphin's popularity ; and so made himself Lord High Treasurer 
of Great Britain. 

What mighty matters spring from little things ! This ! — this ! — 
all this proceeds from Harley having the gauge of the bowels of 
the House of Commons ; for he feasted the members ! 

Passive obedience to the ruling powers, was the text and sermon 
of Sacheverell : a mass of Toryism hashed up by the broken-down 
French-pauper adherents of the house of Stuart, the church, and 
the Maypole ; for " Down with King William's memory, Dutch 
Presbyterian ism, Muggletonians, conventicle-mongers, and Smec- 
tymnuans, or the Tribe of Adoniram ! " was the daily and hourly 
prayer of this thoughtless and bigoted and exasperated party; — 
may I add, ruined worth of county families ; whose Churchism and 
Cavalierism, and devotion to a prodigal, worthless race of kings, 
had spread their patrimonies in ruin, and driven them to despair ; 
a class of men who could not dig, and who to beg were ashamed — 
a ruined race of British nobility — a race ruined by Toryism. 

On the 3rd of March, the humble address of the Commons to the 
Queen represents this sermon (for preaching which Sacheverell was 
then on his trial) to be an attack upon her Majesty's title; and 
her administration endeavoured to be rendered odious to the people, 
and represented as destructive of the church and constitution ; the 
present establishment and Protestant succession undermined; the 
resolutions of Parliament treated with contempt ; the governors of 
the church, and her Majesty as supreme, aspersed and vilified; the 
toleration exposed as wicked, and sedition insolently invading the 
pulpit. 

What was the prosecution, and why undertaken ? It would ap- 
pear from this trial, which lasted twenty days, and which was forced 
upon the government by the extremely violent proceedings of many 
of the clergy preaching, Sunday by Sunday, doctrines favourable 
to the interests of the Pretender, and adverse to the interests of 
claims of the house of Hanover, the Queen's right to the throne, 
and the right of William Prince of Orange to render assistance to 
a people, threatened to be enslaved by their legitimate or hereditary 

22 



338 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

sovereign ; through what they considered to be the powers or in- 
fluences of a false religion — the Roman Catholic. 

William III. held, as a fixed principle of the existence of a free 
people, that a king might be forced from his throne by his people ; 
when he ceased to govern them on acknowledged constitutional 
principles. For calling in question the right to the people of Britain 
to depose their sovereigns, by might and violence, and the assistance 
of a foreign power (for William III. brought 14,000 armed Dutchmen 
with him, to assist him by force of arms, if necessary), to drive his 
father-in-law, James II., from the throne of these realms, with the 
assistance of the people, threatened to be enslaved by arbitrary prin- 
ciples in state, and false passive-obedience principles in religion j and 
for calling in question this principle of right to depose ; which dis- 
puted the title of the Queen herself to her throne ; for this disputing 
a great constitutional question of the sovereignty of the people, was 
Henry Sacheverell, doctor of divinity, tried by the Lords of England, 
and found guilty ! Bravo ! Shade of Simon de Montfort, Earl of 
Leicester ! Bravo ! Shade of Hampden and of Prynne ! Preaching 
passive obedience to the sovereigns of these realms, is a calling in 
question the rights of the people of England — the rights exercised 
at the glorious Revolution of 1688; and constitutes, in the opinion 
of the Lords of England, a high crime and misdemeanor ; and such 
as will render a subject of these realms liable to impeachment. Such 
is the British constitution ! Such are the rights of Englishmen ! 
The majesty of the people is the source of all legitimate power ; and 
the verdict of guilty, passed by the Lords of England on Henry 
Sacheverell in 1710, stamps the theory with the brand of legality — 
it confirms the principle of the sovereignty of the people. Such was 
the principle in 1649 — such in 1688; and such the confirmation of 
the theory, by a solemn act of the legislature in 1710, in the ver- 
dict of guilty passed on Henry Sacheverell. He denied the principle 
on which he was tried and found guilty. 

It is not to be supposed that the trial of Henry Sacheverell, and 
the verdict of guilty pronounced by the House of Lords, was an 
accidental break-out of party violence, exercised in a day of dark- 
ness and lunatic excitement; it was not; for four years after this 



LIFE OF DE FOE, 339 

period, on May 4, 1714, the Rev. Mr. Bedford was sentenced, in the 
Court of King's Bench, to pay a fine of 1000 marks, and to remain 
a prisoner for three years ; and afterwards be bound in a recogni- 
zance, with four sufficient sureties, in the sum of J5000, for his 
good behaviour during his life ; and he was ordered to be brought 
to all the courts in Westminster with a paper on his head signifying 
his offence. What was his offence? Publishing a book showing 
the monarchy of England to be hereditary. Such is the constitution 
of England ; such is the sovereignty of the people, the source of all 
legitimate power. 

To show by what influences the growth of passive- obedience 
principles was advanced in the reign of Queen Anne, I will quote 
from the speech of the Bishop of Salisbury, delivered in the House 
of Lords on this memorable trial ; for on speaking of Leslie, he thus 
addresses himself to the House : — 

11 By the time the Queen was on the throne, or soon after (1702), 
the Rehearsal began to be spread over the nation, two of them a 
week ; which continued for several years together, to be published 
without check or control. It was, all through, one argument against 
the Queen's right to the crown ; that, though it was diversified with 
incidents and digressions, was always kept in view. The clergy 
were in many places drawn into subscriptions for this paper. This 
looked like a design, long connived at, to have the Queen's au- 
thority undermined. Besides this, we had a swarm of pamphlets 
every year to the same purpose ; and, as we believed, written by the 
same hand. One, sold at the door of the House, with the title of 
King William's Exorbitant Grants, did plainly call him an usurper ; 
and, starting an objection against the Queen's possessing the throne, 
gave it this answer, e That she did well to keep it, till she could 
deliver it up to the righteous heir.' At that time there was quick 
prosecution of a paper published with the title of the Shortest Way 
with the Dissenters ; and upon that I brought that pamphlet 
(King William's Exorbitant Grants) to a great minister (the Earl 
of Nottingham), and offered to show him this passage in it, to see 
if there should be a prosecution of this ordered. He turned from 
me ; so whether he heard me or not, I cannot tell ; I am sure, if 

22* 



340 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

he says he did not, I will believe him." No prosecution followed, and 
the Rehearsal went on. The clergy, in many places-, met in coffee- 
houses on Saturdays, to read the Rehearsals of the week, which had 
very ill effects in most places. I know it may be said, that the 
Queen's learned counsel ought to have looked after these things ; 
but we all know that he took little by his quotation ; for the Lords 
and Commons confirmed the principle by their verdict. De Foe 
was right in his declaration, that if the Parliament of 1705 were as 
corrupt and unprincipled as the Parliament of 1 704 — one of the 
most corrupt, venal, and unprincipled of all English Parliaments — 
the people must open what they alone possessed — the magazine of 
original power. 

Well, Mr. Phipps, counsel for Sacheverell, must try to assist his 
cause with a quotation from the Review : — " The same author, 
speaking of the family of the Stuarts, calls it ' the line of all the 
world, fam'd for blood, and that had ravaged the best families in 
the kingdom/ " Mr. Phipps, drew little from this ; for the part 
taken by the people of England in the glorious Revolution of 1688 
only brings a national practical confirmation of a principle or doc- 
trine enunciated by a private individual ; and not only the con- 
firmation of the open rebellion of 1688, but the deliberate consi- 
deration of a twenty days' trial in the House of Lords, such a trial as 
England has seldom seen ; and the verdict here was for the principle 
enunciated in De Foe's Review, four years before; De Foe's prin- 
ciple being those of the Lords and Commons of England. 

Not content with the above, Mr, Phipps must dip again into the 
same bag, in hopes of a prize this time : — " In another paragraph 
he says — ' In short, injure divino come upon the stage, the Queen 
has no more title to the crown than my lord mayor's horse ; all the 
people are bound by the laws of God to depose her as an usurper, 
and restore their rightful and lawful King, James III.' " 

I might almost ask, what could Sacheverell's friends be thinking 
of, to bring such an exposure of title-deeds as this before the nation? 
They must have been very fools ; for all they could draw by the 
inquiry must of necessity be, "that the people are the source or 
origin of all legitimate power." The very act of the Revolution of 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 341 

1688 affirms this; and a denial of this principle, in act and 
deed, is an exclusion of the house of Hanover from the throne of 
these realms. De Foe was right ; and Lords and Commons con- 
firmed him in the doctrine, by their verdict of guilty against 
S ache ver ell. 

On the seventh day, Mr. Phipps, not content with the exposure 
he had made on the fourth day of the trial, must renew the attack ; 
but, as if to be beaten by De Foe alone were not humiliating 
enough, he must join Tutchin of the Observator with him ; thinking, 
I suppose, with Swift and Pope, that these two liberals must of 
necessity be clapped together. What a singular coincidence ! — 
because De Foe had stood in the pillory three times ; and Tutchin, 
as I have said before, had been flogged down Dorchester streets, at 
least once ! Well, Mr. Phipps must try his hand with Tutchin 
now. We shall see with what success : — ■ 

" I submit to your lordships, if the Queen can be safe, when it 
shall be averred in print, that there is one on the other side of the 
water, that is a jure-divino king, and hath an hereditary right. 
Can the Queen or church be safe, when all the whole administration 
is vilified and abused, as it is in the Observator in this manner : — 
{ Countryman : Have you any more knaves to talk of? — Observator: 
Honest Countryman, what would you have me do ? If I must run 
through all the lists of knaves, I must bring in all the courts, all 
the employments, all the classes of public affairs, in the nation/ " 

Mr. Phipps ! — Mr. Phipps must have been a very fool to bring 
such a quotation from Tutchnr's book. What could he make of 
such a quotation, but blacken the reputation of the nation, still 
darker ; for all this was true to the very letter : the Stuarts had 
converted the nation into a nation of scoundrels, and left them, so 
converted, a legacy to William III. and Queen Anne ; both of whom 
they brought to an untimely grave. William was worried to death 
by the unprincipled contentions of Whigs and Tories ; and the same 
took place with respect to Queen Anne : she was killed by the con- 
tentions of unscrupulous and ambitious men at court, her ministers, 
Harley, St. John, and others. George I. might have been killed 
too, if he had been made of the same sensitive materials ; but he 



342 LIFE 01 f DE FOE. 

was not ; for when his faithful cook, whom he had brought from 
Hanover, was about to leave him, because all were thieves in the 
royal kitchin, the King only replied, that he must not leave on that 
account, but he must fall to, and become thief likewise ; for Parlia- 
ment granted the supplies for the royal household on the under- 
standing, that there were more thieves there than anything else. 

In the time of Tutchin, the nation was at the very lowest ebb for 
integrity ; and Tutchin wrote this in his weekly paper, and every- 
body knew it to be true — quite true. Yet a simpleton of a barrister 
named Phipps must quote this truth, as an extenuation of Henry 
SachcverelPs telling a lie. Poor simple Counsellor Phipps ! — try 
again with another statement, and perhaps you may make a better 
case out : — 

" Can the Queen be safe when the murder of King Charles I. 
is justified in print, by the Review and Observator (De Foe and 
Tutchin) ? When the wet martyrdom of King Charles I., and the 
dry martyrdom of King James II., are said to be all one, and no 
difference between them ? I say, how can her Majesty be safe, 
when such rebellious principles are so publicly avowed?" 

What a fool you are, Mr. Phipps ! You cannot let gone-byes 
be gone-byes quietly; but you must sweep the very scaffold of 
the beheaded monarch Charles I., for a clinching of the most 
solemn truth in the British constitution, "that the sovereignty of 
the people is the source, spring, or origin of all legitimate power 
within these realms'' Try again, Mr. Phipps, and with De Foe 
alone this time — try again ; for we are told that it is never too late 
to mend. 

" Can either Church or Queen be safe, when so great and neces- 
sary a part of our constitution, our Parliament, is struck at ? When 
it shall be said, ' that the members sit in the House to do nothing ; 
making long speeches without meaning ; and voting bills without 
design to have them pass'? And when such rebellious principles 
are broached, as I mentioned to your lordships upon Friday last, out 
of the Review, to show the necessity of preaching the doctrine of 
passive obedience, viz., ' If the next Parliament (that of 1 705) should 
prove like this (or that of 1704), the nation will be so much nearer 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 343 

that crisis of time, when English liberty, being brought to the last 
extremity, must open the magazine of Original Power*?" 

y The Stuarts were pensioners of Cardinal Richelieu and of Car- 
dinal Mazarin, the ministers of France, so long as there were Stuarts, 
or up to 1688 ; and from that period, when William III. could not 
be bribed, the French court spent one million sterling in the pur- 
chase of one hundred and seventy seats or votes in the British House 
of Commons, till the English House of Commons was a byword or 
term of reproach to all integrity in Europe ; and De Foe, the sole 
champion of liberty in England, publicly advocated in his Review, 
published for years three times in .each week, the total abrogation 
or abolition of the House of Commons, as part of the government 
of this country, on account of its thorough dishonesty and French 
subserviency; a throwing of British liberty at the feet of the 
House of Lords ; and a trusting to that House alone for a salvation 
of this nation from French bribery, and other dishonest influences. 
And Counsellor Phipps thinks passive-obedience sermons were to be 
the remedy for this state of things : a thorough corruption, brought 
on by French bribing of the English House of Commons. Not con- 
tent with the exhibition of Mr. Phipps, another of the counsel of 
Henry Sacheverell, Mr. Dee, must go into the merits of the Review 
on the subject of religion, by quoting the following from vol. ii. 
pp. 447, 448 : — 

" Whether our fathers had a necessity to make those exclusive 
laws (against the dissenters) , and impose as necessary their different 
things acknowledged to be so, as terms of communion : nor is this 
all ; but supposing they had, which, nevertheless, I do not grant ; 
then this address is further pressed to your lordships [the House of 
Lords evidently addressed here, in 1 705 ; for De Foe had long ago 
done with the Commons — those Commons who chose Harley Speaker 
in three Parliaments, because he fed them. Yes ! he ascended the 
Speaker's chair through their guts], to examine whether that neces- 
sity does yet continue or no : either of which will be the same thing; 
for if there either was a necessity at the time of their enacting, 
or that necessity does not yet remain; let which will happen to 
fail out, the Act of Uniformity, imposing such and such indifferent 



344 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

things, as terms of communion, will appear scandalous to the church, 
injurious to the public peace, and a grievance to the whole nation : — 
" Lest it become a new, proverbial jest, 
To be as wicked as an English priest." 

Again, vol. iii. p. 106 : — " I cannot but tell him, should I publish 
the matters of fact which 1 am master of, with respect to the High- 
flying gentlemen of the clergy ; should I give a faithful account of 
the most infamous and scandalous behaviour, the notorious lives, 
the beastly excesses, and the furious treatment of their brethren, 
the dissenters, which, on a small search, I have been acquainted 
with : the inferior clergy of his party [probably SacheverelPs] would 
appear the most wretched, provoking, abominable crew, that ever 
God suffered to live unpunished, since he destroyed Sodom and 
Gomorrha by fire from heaven." 

Now, I am no lawyer ; but yet my common sense will dictate to 
me, that Mr. Dee, the barrister, is not likely to gain much for the 
prisoner at the bar, his client, by taking Daniel De Foe by the ears 
on the inferior clergy, as a set off. 

Again, vol. ii. p. 418 : — " If words could be made treason, one- 
third at least of the inferior clergy in England would be hanged." 

Again, vol. ii. p. 142 : — " I again appeal to you, gentlemen, 
whether, generally speaking, all over this unhappy nation, the clergy 
are not, three parts in five, in close conjunction with the enemies of 
the church's peace, and the professed enemies of the government? " 
This would be written in 1705, or four years before this impeach- 
ment took place. 

Again, vol. vi. p. 471 : — " Others, not so directly, but altogether 
as fatally, and tending to the same end, with subtle designs to divide 
and amuse the people, by preaching, writing, and printing, endea- 
vour to revive the said exploded doctrines of non-resistance, and 
absolute, unconditional obedience, as things the people of England 
ought to think themselves obliged by ; which, though in themselves 
of no force, yet manifestly tend to unravel the constitution, to inva- 
lidate the Queen's title to the crown, and destroy the legal authority 
of parliaments in the nation. An eminent proof of which is now 
[in this impeachment] depending before the House." 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 

The trial was a foolish one, and the lawyers selected to defend 
the prisoner at the bar, could not be wise men. These quotations 
from De Foe's newspaper, the Review, show that they were not 
wise men. 

Poor Mr. Dee, the counsel for the prisoner, appears to get deeper 
into the mud of church corruption every step he takes ; he quotes 
again from vol. vi. p. 371, as follows : — " Drunkenness, oaths, and 
abominable lewdness ; ignorance, negligence, and scandalous insuf- 
ficiency; abhorred error, Deism and Socinianism, have overrun 
the clergy." 

What will Mr. Dee quote next — poor man ? What, indeed ? — 
Tutchin' s Observator, vol. iv. No. 89, forsooth; and much he will 
get from him; for Tutchin was true to his doctrine, though very 
abusive. I wish he may make anything more out of him than he 
has gotten out of De Foe, by his quotations : — " You know the 
church he means is High Church ; which is a fiction, a church of 
the brain, supported by a little insignificant trifling number of brain- 
less people ; and the people of England are no more concerned about 
that church than about the institutions of government laid down 
in More's Utopia, Harrington's Oceana, or Bacon's New Atlantis ; 
and all the canons, rites, and ceremonies of that church are no more 
to be considered by you or me than so many ballads or Duck-Lane 
penny histories." Such is Tutchin on High Church, about the 
period of Sacheverell's impeachment. Such is the stuff quoted, to 
serve the prisoner at the bar; then on his trial for asserting the 
divine right of kings to rule in England ! 

De Foe again, vol. ii. page 489 : — " The balance between 41 and 
88 will appear to run against him ; and the difference between the 
dry martyrdom of King James, by his passive- obedience-church 
subjects, and the wet martyrdom of King Charles I. by people that 
never made any such pretence, will appear so small, that it 's not 
worth Dr. Drake's while to meddle with it." 

These quotations have been too lengthy, perhaps ; yet the occa- 
sion appears to require justice to be done to De Foe as a writer. 
For his writings he was confined in Newgate for twelve months, to 
the ruin of his family ; and, if I can place him side by side with 



346 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

such a House of Lords for patriotism as England has seldom seen, 
I shall only be doing the man some tribute of justice. De Foe's 
principles were affirmed true by a most illustrious Bench of Bishops, 
and an equally illustrious House of Lords, by their verdict of guilty 
on this ever-memorable impeachment. 

This was not the mere trying a parson for being a bigot-puppy, a 
fool ; but it was testing the principle as to " the people of England 
being the source of all legitimate power, within these realms ;" and 
the verdict was given in the affirmative. Yes ! Passive-obedience 
and jure-divino principles are unconstitutional; and capable of sub- 
jecting the promulgator of such principles to the impeachment in 
the House of Lords. This was the trial of Henry Sacheverell — this 
was the object of that impeachment — the justice of the Revolution 
of 1688, and also that of 1641. 

It is somewhat remarkable that in the month of October, 1 709, 
De Foe's Review was presented by the grand jury as a nuisance, 
because of his exposing the innovations upon the Scottish Church 
Establishment. He goes on to say in that Review, that — " Either 
I must oppose the hot party — the Jacobite interest, and those that 
abuse the Queen, in pretending her authority for imposing innova- 
tions on the Scots; or I must cease to write at all. Now, I cannot 
think that a court of justice can be prevailed on to prosecute, or a 
grand jury to present, any such designs as this, as a nuisance; and 
therefore, as I doubt not of justice in all our courts, where the laws 
are free and open to the meanest subject, so I cannot think that, in 
the prosecution of these just and necessary truths, I can meet with 
any oppression from the law ; nay, I might think I have reason to 
hope for favour/' 

At this period of our history (1710), the social position of England 
was most unsatisfactory : on the one hand, we see a House of 
Lords affirming a principle not second to Magna Charta itself — 
the confirmation by legislation of the fundamental doctrine of the 
Sovereignty of the People. Such was the House of Lords with its 
Bench of Bishops ; and at this time, too, the House of Commons 
acting with the Lords, and showing itself to be respectable and 
honest ; but, on the other hand, the people, for whom the Lords had 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 347 

solemnly affirmed this great principle of national right j and — what 
do we see there? The dwelling-houses of certain dissenting minis- 
ters ransacked, and all their furniture and books destroyed ; and this 
state of things was not confined to London alone ; for at Wrexham, 
in Wales, the mob dressed up the effigies of the dissenting ministers, 
and threw them into bonfires, and even clergymen — " Mr. Hoadley, 
a minister of the Church of England, reverend by his office, styled 
so by the Parliament, and recommended to her Majesty for further 
preferment ; a sound preacher, far from a dissenter, having been a 
zealous disputer against them : this gentleman, guilty of no crime, 
charged with no immorality, a breaker of no law, only a preacher 
of liberty ; see how he is treated by the rabble at Wrexham. They 
dress up a man-of-straw, bring him to the public street of the town, 
and carry him to the door of a meeting-house, or near it ; here, in 
profanation of the holy ordinance of baptism, they christened it, 
some say they sprinkled water upon it ; but they formally gave it a 
name, and called it Ben Hoadley ; then put a rope about its neck, 
and, carrying it in triumph, brought it to the whipping-post, and 
tying it down, as is usual to criminals, scourged it most furiously ; 
then they carried it up, and set it in the pillory ; and, to finish the 
tragedy, took it to the water, and drowned it. Before this, they 
dressed up several effigies of dissenters, as Mr. Daniel Burgess, and 
Dr. Daniel Williams : the one they burnt, and buried the other alive, 
as they called it ; and now they came to a churchman. And what 
had this good man done, to be thus treated ? Nothing but what 
became him as a churchman and as a minister : he had defended 
truth and liberty." This I take from the Review, vol. viii. p. 22. 

Duty compels me to give another quotation from the same work, 
but from the previous volume : — 

" Rebellion to defend non-resistance. It stands upon record (yes ! 
in the sixth chapter of the Review), that, March 1, 1710, the rabble 
being encouraged for two or three days by the doctor and his friends 
to wait upon him to and from Westminster, in cavalcade, more like 
an ambassador of state than a criminal going to the bar of justice ; 
after they had housed the doctor in great mob-pomp, and had 
shouted before his door for some time, they separated themselves 



348 LIFE Or DE FOE. 

into several bodies, as if detached by command of their directors, 
and went directly to the dissenting meeting-houses, broke open seven 
of them, and pulling down the pulpits, pews, galleries, windows, and 
everything they could demolish, carried them out into the streets, and 
burnt them. Besides this, they broke open and rifled the dwelling- 
houses of two dissenting ministers, Mr. Burgess and Mr. Earle, 
carried away or destroyed their goods, books, &c. ; and as for the 
meeting-house of the former, having pulled down the pulpit, pews, 
wainscot, and all other combustibles, they carried them into Lin- 
coln's Inn Fields, where they were placed upon a bonfire, crying 
out, ' High Church and SacheverelP; several other meeting-houses 
suffering the same treatment, when the houses of the Lord Chancellor 
(Cowper), the Earl of Wharton, the Bishop of Sarum (Dr. Burnet), 
Mr. Dolben, and Mr. Hoadley, were threatened by the mob, who 
were only prevented carrying their threats into execution by a de- 
tachment of the Horse Guards ; and these guards being doubled as 
the excitement increased, from the progress of the trial, and by the 
City trained bands being placed under arms to assist the guards, if 
necessary. And now, gentlemen, you see what the Shortest Way 
with the Dissenters, so long ago (1703), warned you of. Here is 
another exemplification of Sacheverell's bloody flag. The dissenters 
and low churchmen — for their interest is the same — may in this see 
plainly what they are to expect, and what the true meaning of the 
non-resistance doctrine is." 

" These (High-Church Tories) are the heads and true originals 
of our tumults and mob. To these we owe riot to explain non- 
resistance, and pulling down meeting-houses, as a testimony of 
their zeal for the indulgence of tender consciences. 'Till this sort 
of people appeared in the world, there was no such thing known. 
Even in King Charles the Second's days, they could never bring 
the mob to pull down the meeting-houses, or rob the dwelling- 
houses of the dissenters. And, really, in this, the different temper 
of this party from any that has been known in England will appear. 
We have had mobs formerly upon various occasions ; and I have 
some thoughts of giving the world a short tract I have had long by 
me, entitled A History of the Mob; but these mobs always aimed 



LIFE OF DE FOE. . 349 

at pulling down some real grievance, and when the work was over, 
they had no further mischief in view. But this rabble was filled 
with thieves and murderers, robbers and incendiaries; their rage 
was bloody, their temper barbarous, and their end plunder and 
destruction." 

Now ! what can we say to this state of things, in England in 
1710 : after lessons given line upon line, and precept upon precept; 
here a little, and there a little ; in the study and upon the scaffold, 
in the gaol and upon the battle-field, from 1640 to 1710 ; or a period 
of seventy years — what can we say ? 

"On the 22nd of March, 1710, Henry Sacheveiell was found 
guilty (of calling the sovereignty of the people in question), and 
was enjoined not to preach for three years ; that his two sermons 
be burnt before the Royal Exchange, London, by the common hang- 
man, in the presence of the lord mayor, and the sheriffs of London 
and Middlesex. This was considered by the mob and their patrons of 
High Church equivalent to an acquittal, and an indication of the 
weakness of the Whig government; therefore at night, by way of 
triumph, several of the streets in London and Westminster were 
illuminated, and bonfires made, and all passers-by made to drink 
Dr. Sacheverell's health." 

And during the period of these disturbances, the Queen herself 
was subjected to the same indignity, by having her carriage stopped 
and surrounded by the mob, crying " God bless your Majesty and 
the Church ; we hope your Majesty is for Dr. Sacheverell ; " for these 
poor tools of the priesthood believed what they had been taught, 
that the impeachment of Sacheverell was an attempt to overturn 
the Church of England, and establish the dissenters in its place. 

Once again, writing at the end of March, immediately after the 
verdict had been given, De Foe adds : — " We have had a most dis- 
tracting, turbulent time for the last two months, occasioned by the 
prosecution of a high-flying clergyman. His defence has been 
carried on with all possible heat, fury, and violence, by the party ; 
and a strong conjunction of Papists, Jacobites, and High-Church 
madmen, has made them appear very formidable to the world. 
Rabbles, tumults, plundering of houses, demolishing meeting- 



350 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

houses, insulting gentlemen in the streets, and honest men in their 
dwellings, have been the necessary consequence of this affair. And 
after all, I must own, though the man has been condemned, his 
principles censured, and his sermon burnt, yet it has not been 
without the most fatal consequences to the nation: as it has revived 
the heats and animosities which began to be laid asleep." 

This is a deplorable state of things, after eight thousand indi- 
viduals had died in gaol, or otherwise, for civil and religious liberty 
during the two reigns of Charles II., and James II., his brother, or 
in about thirty years, from 1660 ; and only twenty years before 
these occurrences took place, in 1710. What shall we say? What 
will kind-hearted critics say to speculations of the political econo- 
mist, on the twenty centuries of Gothic usage of universal suffrage ? 
What ! where are the fruits of the poll-takings on the shores of the 
Baltic among our Gothic ancestors ? I wanted to go back to Gothic 
usages, in this our land, and this our day; I wanted to see the old 
poll of the people taken at the Skire Eak ; and potwalloping or 
potboiling suffrage established in the land ; but Charles II., and 
his brother, James II., killed outright eight thousand good men and 
true ; and a mad, ambitious, coxcomb puppy of a parson, with an 
English rabble, are attempting to add to the number of the victims ! 
Yes ! to kill the very men who have planted their bodies a living 
breakwater against the flood-tide of arbitrary power — yes ! kill 
these men ! Why ? To throw themselves body and soul, as crawl- 
ing sycophants at the feet of the tyrannical, the outlawed, the 
accursed house of Stuart ; the head of which family was advertised 
by the British government, and £100,000 sterling offered for 
his apprehension, only four years after the period I am now 
writing upon ! With universal suffrage I have done : I will never 
support it. 

Against these outrageous assaults upon the dissenting meeting- 
houses, De Foe took his stand in the first rank ; and, of course, 
took first-rank honours at the hands of his opponents ; for he was 
threatened with everything, even death itself, though he laughed in 
his sleeve at what had happened on the preaching the panic among 
the dissenters, though it had failed through his writing ; he having 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 351 

written himself into Newgate instead, for twelve months; and Harley 
into office. 

De Foe writes in his Review as folio ws, upon his personal dangers 
at this time, from this senseless High-Church-Stuart-adoring and 
honest-man-debasing rabble ; the same class we sometimes read of, 
who cried, at the Jewish priestly dictation, " Not this man, but 
Barabbas"; and that same debased class also, who cried on another 
occasion, prompted by the same fraternity, the endowed dominant 
priesthood of Ephesus, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians": — 

" I am not always to be frightened with threatening letters and 
shams of assassination: ever thinking those people who talk so 
much of killing, never do it. Though I am not to be classed with 
those you call fighting fellows, yet I am not in the number of those 
who are afraid to see themselves die; and may I hope, without 
being taxed with vanity, profess not to practise non-resistance. I 
have by me fifteen letters from gentlemen of more anger than honour, 
who have faithfully promised to come and kill me by such-and-such 
a day ; nay, some have descended to tell me the very manner ; yet 
not one of them has been so good as his word. Once I had the 
misfortune to come into a room where five gentlemen had been 
killing me a quarter of an hour before ; yet, to the reproach of their 
villanous design, as well as of their courage, they did not dare to 
own it to a poor defenceless man when he was too much in their 
power. In short, I here give my testimony, from my own expe- 
rience, and I note it for the instruction of these five assassins, that 
their cause is villanous, and that makes the party cowardly. A man 
that has any honour in him, is really put to more difficulty how to 
speak than how to act ; in the case of murder and assassination, he 
is straitened between the extremes of showing too much courage or 
too much fear. Should I tell the world the repeated cautions given 
me by my friends not to appear in the streets, nor to show myself; 
letters sent to bid me remember Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, Mr. 
Tutchin, and the like ; should I let you know how I have been three 
times beset and waylaid for the mischief designed, but still I live ; 
you would wonder what I mean. Wherefore, my brief resolution 
is this : while I live, they may be assured I shall never desist doing 



352 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

my duty, in exposing the doctrines that oppose God and the Revo- 
lution : such as passive submission to tyrants, and non-resistance in 
cases of oppression. If those who are at a loss for arguments, are 
resolved to better their cause by violence and blood, I leave the 
issue to God's providence ; and must do as well with them as I can. 
As to defence, I have had some thoughts to stay at home by night, 
and by day to wear a piece of armour on my back : the first, because 
I am persuaded these murderers will not do their work by daylight ; 
and the second, because I firmly believe they will never attempt it 
fairly to my face. 

" I confess there may be some reason for me to apprehend this 
wicked party; and therefore, as I thank God I am without a 
disturbing fear, so I am not without caution. Assassination and 
murder are, indeed, something more suitable to the high-flying 
cause, and has been more in use with that party than with other 
people. 'Tis the cause of tyranny, and tyranny always leads to 
blood. Oppression goes hand-in-hand with violence ; and he that 
would invade my liberty, would invade my life as he has oppor- 
tunity. But I cannot see why they should be so exasperated at the 
poor Review : a sorry, despised author, to use the words of one of 
their party, whom nobody gives heed to. Well, then, let your anger 
be pointed at some more significant animal, that is more capable to 
wound you ; and do not own this author to be so considerable as to 
engage your resentment, lest you prove the unanswerable force of 
what he says, by the concern you are at to suppress him. But, if he 
were to be sacrificed by your impious hands, truth would never want 
champions to defend it ; and killing the Review would be like cutting 
off the monster's head, for a hundred to rise up in the room of it. 

" Upon the whole, as I am going on in what I esteem my duty, 
and for the public good, I firmly believe it will not please God to 
deliver me up to this bloody and ungodly party; and, therefore, 
shall still go on to expose a bigoted race of people, in order to 
reclaim and reform them, or to open the eyes of the good people of 
Britain, that they may not be imposed upon. Whether in this work 
I meet with punishment or praise, safety or hazard, life or death, 
Te Deum laudamus" 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 353 

In the 7th volume of the Review, De Foe thus calls upon the 
Whigs, broken in spirit and fleeing before their enemies, to rally 
and form again, for another charge, in opposition to Toryism and 
the Stuarts ; for the French interest at St. Germains, the support 
of the Pretender, in opposition to the Elector of Hanover, was the 
prize the Tories and High Church were contending for in all this 
riot and destruction, and opposition to the friends of the late King 
William of glorious memory : — 

" Think ye that the cause of liberty and of truth, that has cost 
so much blood, and has been twenty-two years in planting, is thus 
to be pulled up and rooted out? No, never fear it; God will 
not forsake it ; and though the pride and security, the divisions 
and selfishness, of its friends, have really opened this door of mis- 
chief, and you have with your hands too much encouraged these 
enemies, and weakened the hands of those that saved you, yet it is 
not too late to unite and exert yourselves ; which, if you do, you 
will with ease trample this contemptible, though numerous and 
noisy, enemy under your feet. Things are come to that height 
that we must either defend our cause, or give it up. If it is not 
the cause of truth, let the Queen and Parliament determine it to be 
so ; and then, perhaps, it may be time for honest men to think of 
it. But, if it be the cause of truth, let all the Demas's of the age 
forsake it ; if my heart does not deceive me, yet would I not cease 
to own and defend it. I am satisfied the cause of liberty is the 
cause of truth ; and it is from this principle only that I oppose the 
High- Church darling, Sacheverell; and do it in the teeth of his 
mob, when his cause would be thought rising, and when I see men 
that pretend to revolution principles, cowed and afraid. I have 
nothing to say to the man ; I owe him neither good nor ill ; it is 
the temper of insulting the laws, and preaching up tyranny, that I 
oppose ; and this I will oppose, if the tyrant were an emperor." 

To such a pitch had this preaching contest extended ; for it was 
a contest of Harley against Godolphin ; — the Elector of Hanover 
against the house of Stuart ; or Whig and freedom for the people, on 
the principle of the people being the source of all legitimate power, 
against Toryism, divine-right-of-kingism, and passive-obedienceism ; 

23 



354 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

the very concentration of Stuartism, and French-pensionism ; with 
a thorough prostration of all rights, civil and religious, within these 
realms, at the feet of a dominant, endowed, religious sect : — To such 
a pitch of contention did this preaching contest extend, "that 
women lay aside their tea and chocolate, leave off visiting after 
dinner, and, forming themselves into cabals, turn privy councillors, 
and settle the affairs of state. Every lady of quality has her head 
more particularly full of business than usual; nay, some of the ladies 
talk of keeping female secretaries ; and none will be fit for the office 
but such as can speak French, Dutch, and, which is worse, Latin. 
Gallantry and gaiety are now laid aside for business; matters of 
government and affairs of state are become the province of the 
ladies ; and no wonder if they are too much engaged to concern 
themselves about the common impertinences of life. Indeed, they 
have hardly leisure to live, little time to eat and sleep, and none at 
all to say their prayers. If you turn your eye to the Park, the 
ladies are not there ; even the church is thinner than usual ; for you 
know, the mode is for privy councils to meet on Sundays. The 
very playhouse feels the effects of it ; and the great Betterton died 
a beggar on this account. Nay, the Tatler — the immortal Tatler, 
the great Bickerstaff himself, was fain to leave off talking to the 
ladies, during the Doctor's trial, and turn his sagacious pen to the 
dark subject of death and the next world; though he has not yet 
decided the ancient debate, whether Pluto's regions were, in point 
of government, a kingdom or a commonwealth. 

" Mobs, rabbles, tumults, possess the streets ; whores, pimps, and 
cullies, the walks ; the dressing, the powdering, the beau monde, is 
adjourned to the chocolate-houses, and is all among the men. The 
ladies are otherwise engaged: even the little boys and girls talk 
politics. Little miss has Dr. SacheverelPs picture put into her 
Prayer Book, that God and the Doctor may take her up in the 
morning before breakfast ; and all manner of discourse among the 
women runs now upon war and government. Tattling nonsense 
and slander is transferred to the males, and adjourned from the 
toilet to the coffee-houses and groom-porters. This being the 
general state of the nation, you must no more wonder that our 






LIFE OF DE FOE. 355 

wiser statesmen, and able ministry, totter in their high posts, and 
you are every day alarmed with changes at court." 

This national hubbub about divine rights of the Stuart family 
ended, where it was intended to end by the prime mover in the 
plot. — in himself (Harley) being raised to the chancellorship of the 
Exchequer. So much for treating, feasting, promising, and preach- 
ing. Harley was the prime mover in all this national disturbance ; 
and probably with the connivance of the Queen herself, through the 
influence and confidence of Mrs. Mash am, her bedchamber woman, 
the relative of Harley. These facts are given in the gross ; for space 
would not allow to go through all the turmoils of pamphlets, &c, 
of the period ; suffice to say, the trick took, and Harley obtained a 
place in the ministry, with a fair prospect of serving the interests of 
the Pretender, and of obliging the Queen by so doing. 

All this time the nation was in the greatest state of excitement, 
when Sir Gilbert Heathcote, the governor ; Nathaniel Gold, Esq., 
the deputy governor ; Francis Eyles, Esq., and Sir William Scawen, 
two of the directors of the Bank of England, were introduced by the 
Duke of Newcastle, lord privy seal, to her Majesty, and represented 
to her that the public credit could not be supported by the present 
or new ministry. Vryberge, the Dutch envoy, as well as the 
Austrian envoy from Vienna, represented the same on behalf of 
Holland and Austria; with which interference on the part of these 
foreign powers her Majesty was highly indignant, as she professed 
to have a right to change her ministers, and dissolve Parliament too, 
as she thought proper, without any interference from the States ; 
and a dissolution of Parliament, a move generally conversed upon 
at the time, was resolved upon. The moneyed interest of the nation 
being the dissenters, who sympathized with the late ministers, just 
superseded by Harley, St. John, and his Tory friends, took alarm, 
and began to sell out their stock ; so that Bank Stock fell again 
from 126 to 118, and other securities in proportion, to the great 
dismay of the City financiers. All this was very offensive to the 
Queen and the ministry, who took their revenge on the moneyed 
interest the following session, by passing an act (under pretence of 
securing the freedom of Parliament) for raising the qualification 

23* 



356 LIFE OF DF, FOE. 

of a member of the House of Commons to 6600 per annum in 
landed estate, for a county member ; and £300 per annum, from the 
same class of property, for a borough member; with exceptions 
made for peers' sons, and the members of the universities. This 
was to pack the House of Commons with Tories, who were the land- 
holders, High-Church supporters of Dr. Sacheverell, and James III., 
the Queen's half-brother — the King of St. Germains ! 

During all this time, De Foe kept manfully to h!s post at the 
Review, writing in his paper, twice or thrice in each week, every 
encouragement to the Whigs and their moneyed friends to keep up 
their spirits under all discouragements, and support the credit of the 
country, regardless of party, in power or out ; and in vol. vii. p. 233, 
of that work, he wrote as follows : — 

" I believe no man will deny, that this is the most critical time 
for any man that writes of public affairs. I know but one man in 
the world so qualified ; and, find him where you will, this must be 
his character : — He must be one that, searching into the depths of 
truth, dare speak her aloud in the most dangerous times ; that fears 
no faces, courts no favours, is subject to no interest, bigoted to no 
party, and will be a hypocrite for no gain. I will not say I am the 
man : I leave that to posterity. If I have had any friends, it is 
amongst those that are turned out ; and if I had the power to lead, 
perhaps I should bring them all in again. If Tories, Jacobites, 
High-flyers, and madmen, are to come in, I am against them. I 
ask them no favour, I make no court to them ; nor am I going 
about to please them ; and yet I expect not to oblige those that I 
think the best of." 

The new ministry hired what talent they could to write them up 
in public estimation ; and one of their first acts was to present the 
unprincipled Jonathan Swift, the pamphleteer, to their royal mistress 
for a bishopric ! 

Perhaps this may be the place for me to pay a just tribute of 
praise and thanks to one of Daniel De Foe's most ardent admirers, 
faithful biographers, and assiduous collectors from his stock of two 
hundred known and acknowledged publications. To this man, 
Walter Wilson, Esq., I am greatly indebted ; for I have used his 
work as a landmark for dates and indexes to these several publica- 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 357 

tions of De Foe. From my great desire to avoid the appearance of 
copying from Mr. Wilson's work, I have omitted scores of minor 
events connected with De Foe, which, in a great measure, rested 
upon Mr. Wilson's knowledge of works, pamphlets, lampoons, 
broadsheets, &c, and which I could not myself verify in the private 
collection, the bookshop, or the reading-room of the British Mu- 
seum. I mention this, because I could not bind myself to take 
seriatim all De Foe's pamphlets, with all their answers. I have 
before me a whole page in Wilson, on a pamphlet and its answer, 
where De Foe is charged with stealing a horse at Coventry election, 
and riding the same to Scotland, and never owning Coventry again. 
This, and a score more pamphlets and their answers, I leave to Mr. 
Wilson ; for I have not the works, and could touch the information 
on Mr. Wilson's authority only. 

Macaulay's History of England I have never touched — never 
opened — for fear of stealing some idea or other ; but I know that 
Macaulay could only drink at the same fountain as myself; for I 
think I have been at every spring, from Charles Leslie, the most 
Jesuitical and dangerous man of his day, the source of half the 
religious contentions of the reign of Anne, and one I suspect to 
have been used as a tool, occasionally at least, as circumstances 
might require, by Harley, along with De Foe, Sacheverell, and 
others, for the furtherance of this man's objects of ambition;— I 
have gone from Leslie, down to Ned Ward, the alehouse poet, who 
wrote the anthems said to be sung at the Calves' Head feasts of the 
30th of January, where the dissenters were stated to have sung 
them at this their club-dinners, over calves' heads and cods' heads, 
to commemorate the beheading of Charles I. 

Anniversary Anthem for 1695. 
i. 
What the devil means all this pother, 
On this clay more than another ? 
See ! the sot to church reels out ! 

See ! the leacher leaves his whore ; 

The rogues, that never pray'd before, 
Are grown most plaguily devout. 



358 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

II. 

Prithee, parson, why those faces, 
Pious frowns, and damn'd grimaces ? 
Why so many creeds and masses, 

Collects, lessons, and the rest, 

Of the holy garbage drest, 
Proper food for mumbling asses ? 

in. 
Oh ! sir, it 's a debt, they say 
Mother Church must yearly pay 
To her saint's canonization : 

It was the day in which he fell 

A martyr to the cause of hell, 
Justly crown'd with decollation. 

IV. 

Mirth for us and generous wine ; 
Let the clergy cant and whine, 
Preach and prate about rebellion ; 

No more beasts of kings, good Heaven ! 

Such as late in wrath were given, 
Two curs'd tyrants, and a stallion. 

v. 

Now prepare, my lads, and stand, 
Each his bumper in his hand ; 
Brutus ! 'tis a health to thee, 

Thou whose generous arm and sword 

In a cause like ours restor'd 
Home's expiring liberty. 

VI. 

Fill the glass with sparkling red ; 
Look, 'twas thus the tyrant bled ; 
Thus our fathers let us see 

What before had sacred stood, 

Fawn'd and worshipp'd as a god, 
Was flesh and blood as well as we. 

Well, but to return to Mr. Wilson as an authority on De-Foe 
matters. I take the liberty of quoting from p. 183, vol iii :-^- 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 359 

" A spirit of fanaticism, fostered by the exertions of a bigoted 
and vicious clergy, pervaded the land, and blighted all that was 
kind, gentle, and peaceable. The madness that possessed the people, 
and the dangerous principles that actuated their leaders, are mi- 
nutely detailed and canvassed by our author, whose zeal for the 
cause of liberty was unabated in the most perilous times, and 
exposed him to the rage of the factious. The ascendency of the 
Tories he viewed with deep regret, but without dismay : being per- 
suaded that the laws were strong enough to hold them to their 
duty, and that, if they attempted to break through them, it would 
convulse the nation, and they would be ruined in the conflict. The 
violence of the party, and their known hatred to the author, rendered 
him more circumspect and measured in his language, which some 
mistook for a desertion of his principles ; but he repels the charge 
with indignation, and knew the men he had to deal with too well 
to give them any pretence for the exercise of their vengeance. 

" In these factious times, men of the best principles and of the 
fairest reputation, found no quarter from their political opponents. 
It is, therefore, not surprising, that so determined a writer as De 
Foe should have his full share of opprobrium, and that he was often 
assailed in other papers. Since Leslie had dropped his Rehearsals, 
he took but little notice of such opponents, as well from a contempt 
of their talents, as from a studied neglect of their scurrility. ' It 
was always my opinion/ says he, 'that when the enemy roared 
loudest, he was pinched the hardest : and that when the patient 
grew sick, the physic worked well/ " 

At this time, Harley was at his wit's end for expedients for 
carrying on the government; for he well knew that the violent 
shortsighted Tories would avail him nothing; so in his difficulty 
he applied to Lord Somers, the most intelligent as well as honest 
statesman in the kingdom ; but Lord Somers, as independent as 
honest, declined the connection, he knowing well the dependence to 
be placed upon the man. 

Things being in this state, a dissolution of Parliament was ine- 
vitable ; the very mention of which, caused a panic amongst the 
moneyed interest of the city of London, when the directors of the 



360 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Bank again informed the government, that the very issuing of the 
writs for a new Parliament would cause a run upon the Bank of 
England, and force it to close its doors : the panic appearing as 
prevalent amongst the large foreign stockholders of Amsterdam, 
Hamburg, &c. ; they being as anxious to sell immediately as the 
moneyed interest of London, headed by Sir Francis Child, the son 
or grandson of the great Sir Josiah Child, the political-economic 
writer of his day, on money matters, banking, funding, &c. 

All was confusion at court in consequence of this state of things ; 
and, to make affairs no better, the Duke of Somerset, master of the 
house, resigned his place in the ministry, and went over to the 
Whigs. 

On the 21st of September, 1710, the proclamation for the disso- 
lution of the present Parliament appeared ; when the firebrand Dr. 
Sacheverell employed his whole time to inflame the minds of the 
people, and raise the very spirit of the lowest hell, to run down 
civil and religious liberty throughout the land. High Church and 
Passive Obedience was to be the god of the mob's idolatry ; and 
Dissenters, Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Muggleto- 
nians, with Hogan-Mogans or Dutchmen, and Hanoverians, of all 
others, to be shunned and avoided. 

In this time of national distress, De Foe came to the public 
rescue, in another pamphlet of caution to the people, entitled " A 
Word against the New Election; that the People of England 
may see the happy Difference between English Liberty and French 
Slavery ; and may consider well before they make the Exchange. 
Printed in the year 1710. 8vo, pp. 33." 

He commences by observing : — " That the time is come when 
God has been pleased to give some people up to strong delusions ; 
and to bring this to pass, that a wicked party of men have, with 
too much success, assisted the general defection; having first spread 
a cloud over the eyes of the people, and then dug the pit in their 
way. In religion, they have been fed with words for substance, 
politics for doctrine, and railing for application ; taking up prin- 
ciples of persecution, fury, and abhorrence of their brethren. In 
government, they embrace tyranny for legal monarchy; hereditary 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 361 

right, instead of parliamentary limitation ; and arbitrary will, for 
law ; by which they are led blindfold to practise absolute submis- 
sion, like the true tribe of Issachar, crouching before the load is 
laid on, courting their own chains, and addressing their sovereign 
for slavery." 

The Rev. William Bisset, eldest brother of the collegiate church 
of St. Katharine, and rector of Whiston, in Northamptonshire, at 
this time wrote a Life of Sacheverell, and a preface ; a quotation 
from which I will give, as the sentiments of this preface, written and 
printed in 1710, so fully bear out, what must be concluded from a 
careful sifting of evidence now, after a lapse of one hundred and 
fifty years : that the mobs employed by Sacheverell at the elections 
for members of Parliament in 1710, were not "true natural British 
mobs." This is my fixed opinion. Harley was in office, a relation 
of Mrs. Masham, the Queen's confidential female attendant ; and 
he, too, a favourite and confidential, as well as a minister of the 
Queen. Sacheverell, the great firebrand, a tool of some one's, 
agitating through the country for High Church and the Pretender, 
against, I suppose, the whole moneyed interest of England, the 
dissenters, and the succession of the house of Hanover. This was 
the contest. Sacheverell was working under Harley ; Harley was 
working with the Queen ; the whole country was convulsed — yes ! 
agitated to its very centre ; but who paid the price? — for the move- 
ment was not supposed to have been English. Could the Queen 
rob the Exchequer for funds; or had she saved money for the 
purpose ? As for the old gentry, the adherents of the Stuarts, they 
had, in countless instances, sold, mortgaged, or leased the estates 
for five thousand years, about 1642, or a little later; when every 
little landed proprietor was raising his troop of horse for the King, 
and calling himself Captain. As for the Stuarts at St. Germains, 
they had no money; for they were pensioners on the court of 
France, It is possible that Louis XIV. might again take the field 
in English politics, and try to possess an interest in the English 
House of Commons, as he had done before, when he possessed 170 
seats in the House; to support the Spanish Will question, in 
opposition to the Partition Treaty. I believe Harley set Sacheverell 



362 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

at work ; and somebody employed Harley, to serve the interests of 
the house of Stuart, in opposition to the interests of the house of 
Hanover; and that this election of 1710 was to decide the point in 
dispute for ever — Hanover or Stuart. 

I will now give an extract from Mr. Bisset'3 preface : — 
" We have had now a year of extreme violence and confusion, 
such as cannot be matched, without a civil war, in any history that 
I have met with ; a year through which nothing but an Almighty 
Providence could have brought moderate, plain- dealing Protestants 
alive and unmaimed ; and in which all such might truly be said, 
like the Jews after Hainan's court intrigue, Est. viii. 11, 'to stand 
for their life/ I cannot but think it highly unreasonable, that such 
should always be represented as a stubborn and stiffnecked genera- 
tion, who have been so tame and passive under so many and such 
outrageous insults. Had my house (which is my castle in the eye 
of the law) been attacked, and myself in it (as was threatened, but 
I happened to be then in the country), I conceive it was not only 
my right, but my duty too, and a necessary point of distributive 
justice, impartially to have dispensed the contents of a musquetoon 
or two (nay, as many as the time would admit) amongst them ; 
and should think my life well bestowed (as well as in Spain or 
Flanders) to rid the world of as many such lewd fellows of the 
baser sort as possible ; that the rest who survive might live more at 
peace, and so die with the Philistines. For, certainly, a Frenchified 
mob, and a French army, deserve the same acts of hostility; and 
'tis an equal piece of service to the public, to oppose the regular or 
irregular troops of the grand oppressor (Louis XIV., the patron of 
the Pretender) . With this view, I cannot but commend a stout 
and honest friend, who laid about half-a-score of them sprawling 
at his door, for breaking his windows, and insulting his servant, 
and threatening further mischief. 

" It can never enter into my head, that the late were true natural 
British mobs; there are all the signs that can be of an artificial 
hired mob, like Sir J. Friend's regiment, though kept incognito in 
and about the town, ready to appear in arms (such arms as the case 
required) at the first signal or word of command. For, besides that, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 363 

one in the chariot with Dr. Sacheverell was said to have scattered 
money among the crowd; and he was heard to say, with a most 
obliging bow and smile, when he dismissed his corps de garde at his 
lodging in the Temple, f Good night, gentlemen/ a condescension 
too great from so very proud a person to porters and cobblers, if 
there had not been some gentlemen among them. A friend of 
mine happened to dine at a great table a day or two before the 
grand rebellion (this city of London election riot), where a young 
Oxonian, just come to town (as hundreds more were), said, there 
would be suddenly warm work, and cursed me in particular. Since 
the first outrages, there has been no stone left unturned, to keep 
up the ferment till the election ; and one main artifice has been, 
swarms of libels, to render the fanatics (a name that takes in all but 
Tories) odious ." 

This Sacheverell-Pretender election riot was not an affair of a 
day, or a week, or a month ; for, as Mr. Bisset observes — " Nor 
was it only a short hurricane (for then we might better have borne 
it), but a lasting tempest ; and neither sun nor stars for many days 
appeared. All freedom of conversation has been ever since banished; 
instead of which, quarrels or shyness have succeeded among the 
most intimate acquaintance. It has fomented disputes among men, 
women, and children ; the very boys at school are, ever and anon, 
fighting in this shameful cause ; and I hear one was almost killed ; 
and, His to be feared, such offences and grudges have been taken, 
as will not be easily overcome, till reason and religion begin to 
recover their former power. Nothing but hectoring, mobbing, 
brazening, insulting, and burning their neighbours in effigy; a 
plain indication what they long and hope to be at ; viz., the old 
Smithfield pastime ; and their fingers itch to be throwing faggots 
at hereticks ; and, in more instances than I can name, playing the 
devil in perfection." 

" I have since that been mobbed, that is, insulted in the open 
streets, with the foulest language, by mere strangers (for cavils of 
acquaintance I do not take into the account), times without num- 
ber. The same day the news of the taking Douay came to town 
(for any success of the allies constantly enrages them) I was insulted 



364 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

four times between my home and the Exchange. Once a company 
of blustering blades bade the people, again and again, despatch me, 
by throwing me into the Thames ; and I have been informed, that 
three armed ruffians have been inquiring for me, and hovering 
about to waylay me. I bless God, I fear nothing but Him, whilst 
in the way of my duty ; and hope for nothing but heaven ; for I 
must not think of rising (as an honest friend told me) till the 
general resurrection. Suffice to say, the High Church and the 
Pretender were the ordinary street pass-words or salutations ; and a 
stranger, or one ignorant of the requirements of party violence and 
usurpation, would be certain to be insulted, and perhaps injured in 
his person, for not responding to the call." De Foe is very active 
through the whole period of this revolutionary insubordination, and 
occupies many numbers, in his seventh volume of the Review, in 
recording the progress of strife ; as thus, in p. 361 of that volume : 
— " I cannot think that any wise man of either side can approve of 
the riots and tumults practised at the election. Let him go through 
the streets, and view the houses, how they look like houses of ill 
fame, with their windows broken, their shutters daubed with dirt, 
and their balconies full of stones ; as if some public enemy had 
taken possession of the city. Rage and madness filled the streets, 
and every one was exposed to the discretion of the rabble. In the 
general disorder, no regard was paid either to friend or foe. Let 
any man view the streets. Are they all Whigs that dwell between 
Ludgate and Temple Bar? And was there a house that was not in 
this manner insulted? And what was it for? All for choosing 
parliament-men to make laws for good government, protect our pro- 
perty, and preserve the peace \" 

The new Parliament assembled on the 25th of November; and 
a great preponderance of Toryism was the manifest strength of the 
House ; from its first opening, Marlborough and his victories, with 
the dissenters, being slighted. 

At this period, De Foe was in Scotland, employed by some one, 
for some purpose. On the 1st of February, 1711, he was empowered 
by the corporation of Edinburgh to publish the Edinburgh Courant, 
in the room of Adam Booge, deceased ; the privilege of printing 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 365 

news under this title being confirmed to him exclusively, for the 
past services performed by him, for Scotland or Edinburgh. This 
undertaking he only continued through forty-five numbers, and 
then relinquished the undertaking to others ; he, probably, finding 
that the Review in London, and the Courant in Edinburgh, each 
published twice or thrice in each week, were more than he could 
individually well manage ; considering the claims upon his pen from 
events occurring in either country, which might require his assist- 
ance in a pamphlet at any moment. 

De Foe, in his Review, vol. vii. p. 454, for Dec. 16, 1710, leaves on 
record the following testimonial of his treatment by the Pretender's 
party, now supported manfully by the mean huckter of literary ta- 
lent, Jonathan Swift, in the Examiner; the man whom Queen Anne 
could not make a bishop of, even when recommended by all the 
force of the patronage of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Robert 
Harley. The Archbishop of York, Dr. Sharpe, formerly of Brad- 
ford, in Yorkshire, and the Duchess of Somerset, the Queen's 
favourite, and mistress of the robes, solemnly protested, and the 
latter with tears and supplications, against the appointment; on 
account of Jonathan Swift, the author of the Tale of a Tub, being 
an infidel. 

Swift wrote the following in 1713, or shortly before the Queen's 
death, showing the period of his acquaintance with St. John and 
Harley, the ministers, who paid him for writing the Examiner, and 
for other business in the slandering way; for he was the hired 
slang writer or actor of his day — the buffoon paid to throw dust 
into the eyes of the people, under pretence of amusing them with 
light reading : — 

'Tis (let me see) three years and more, 
October next it will be four, 
Since Harley hid me first attend, 
And chose me for an humble friend. 

This is the testimony of Jonathan Swift, of the commencement 
of his acquaintance with Harley and St. John, as a political writer ; 
and, as this was written in 1713, it would appear that their acquaint- 



366 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

ance commenced a fortnight before Sacheverell preached his cele- 
brated Fifth-of-November Sermon, which overthrew the ministry of 
Lord Godolphin, and placed Robert Harley and St. John in power. 
Sacheverell was impeached, and found guilty of high treason, as we 
have before shown — the treason of calling in question the funda- 
mental principle of the British constitution, the sovereignty of the 
people. He was found guilty by the Lords, but the ministry were 
too weak to hang him; but suspended him for two years; and 
retired from power, to make room for Robert Harley, the mainspring 
of this grand machine of agitation, intended, through the writings 
of Swift, Pope, and Prior, to overturn the British constitution — 
recall the exiled family of Stuart — make the Chevalier Charles 
Edward the Pretender, King of England — and make, likewise, 
Jonathan Swift, Archbishop of Canterbury. 

This political connection between Harley, St. John, Swift, Pope, 
and Matthew Prior, continued in close confederation from the 
preaching of Sacheverell's celebrated Fifth-of-November Sermon, 
down to a few days previous to the Queen's death : a period of about 
three years and a half; during which time, Swift resided altogether 
in London, as the companion of these ministers, and as their paid 
writer. 

Although Swift, Pope, and Prior, in their Examiner, took great 
liberties with their opponents, yet it is not to be supposed that they 
came off scot-free, although supported and paid by the ministers of 
the day, Harley, St. John, Mrs. Masham, and perhaps Queen Anne ; 
for it was a Pretender- supporting job altogether. De Foe, in his 
Review, vol. vii. pp. 449 — 451, writes to these parties : — 

" I wonder much to hear an author, who first calls the Observator 
and the Review stupid and illiterate, should quit his talking to men 
of sense, to talk to these idiots. Now, what the Observator may do, 
I say nothing ; but as I have all along practised with many other 
such scurrilous, angry sons of emptiness, so I shall still — answer 
and say nothing." 

" I know nothing that can render a gentleman so contemptible 
as to lose his breeding ; nor does any difference of persons discharge 
the obligation of good manners. The author of the Examiner 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 367 

haughtily tells me, that he has kept a footman; and, though he 
does not pretend to say that the Review has been in that capacity, 
yet he treats him as a man of behaviour would not treat a 
footman." 

" How often have I seen a man boast of his letters and his load 
of learning, and be ignorant of the common necessary acquirements 
that fit a man for the service of himself and of his country. I know 
a man at this time, a minister, who is a critic in the Greek and 
Hebrew, a complete master of Latin; yet it would make a man 
blush to read a letter from him, sleep to hear him preach, and sick 
to read his books. Again : I know another that is an orator in 
Latin ; a walking index of books ; has all the libraries in Europe 
in his head, from the Vatican at Rome to the learned collection of 
Dr. Salmon, at the Fleet Ditch ; but, at the same time, be a cynic 
in behaviour, a fury in temper, unpolite in conversation, abusive in 
language, and ungovernable in passion. Is this to be learned? 
Then may I still be illiterate." 

Swift found it convenient not to know De Foe's name ; but from 
the above attack on the Examiner, it is very evident that De Foe 
both knew the name of Jonathan Swift, and also his nature. When 
writing the following he had his eye on Swift : — " I thought myself 
master of geography, and to possess sufficient skill in astronomy, to 
have set up for a country almanac-maker ; yet could in neither of 
the globes find either in what part of the world such a heterogeneous 
creature lives ; nor under the influence of what heavenly body he 
can be produced. From whence I conclude very frankly, that either 
there is no such creature in the world [as Jonathan Swift] , or that, 
according to Mr. Examiner, I am a stupid idiot, and a very illiterate 
fellow." 

At this time Swift, Pope, and Prior, with Harley and Mrs.Masham, 
were not the only tools to counteract the advance of the house of 
Hanover to the throne of these realms. No — De Foe, the great 
champion of liberty at the time — the great unpaid, too ; for no man 
wrote so much for the benefit of the people of England, with such a 
small return of money, or gratitude. Hear what he says in his 
Review, vol. vii. p. 490 : — 



368 LIFE OP DE FOE. 

" It is hut lately that I trouhled the world with a complaint of 
the barbarous usage I met with from a villain's waiting and watch- 
ing for me, under a pretence to arrest, though without a warrant, 
and whether to murder or deliver me up to those that should, is 
like, for want of justice, to remain a secret. I took up lately one of 
these fellows with a sham writ. He had taken money of a man 
employed by me formerly to treat with him, believing him then to 
have been an officer. This villain I had long pursued, and at last 
apprehended. He begged, confessed, offered to refund the money, 
and pay the charges ; but, not discovering his accomplices, he was 
carried before a justice of the peace, not a hundred miles from Sir 
H — y B — Ids. The justice, when he heard the first complaint, 
readily granted his warrant ; the case was so black, he could not but 
resolve to punish it. The rogue is brought before him ; a lawyer 
appears, makes out the fact, and the justice discovered some indig- 
nation at the crime. But as soon as he heard the prosecutor was 
Daniel De Foe, author of the Review, he calls the gentleman that 
pleaded a rogue ; though as honest a man as himself, and, by the 
way, no Whig ; discharges the warrant, and bids the villain keep 
the money ; which, for all that, he shall not do, nor shall the justice 
himself escape the shame of his partiality, for giving orders to a 
cheat to keep what he owned to have been unjustly gotten. Excel- 
lent justice this, to make a nation flourish ! " 

Well ! this is all on one side, the Whig side too ! — because he 
supported the public credit, even when the Tories were in office ; 
as if the nation was to be thrown down by every possible means, 
because the Tories were in office at Downing Street. But not con- 
sidering this sample of national slavery sufficient, he further relates 
another case implicating Whigs : — 

" On board a ship I loaded some goods. The master is a Whig, 
of a kind more particular than ordinary. He comes to the port, my 
bill of lading is produced, my title to my goods undisputed ; no 
claim, no pretence ; but my goods cannot be found. The ship sailed 
again, and I am told my goods are carried back ; and all the reason 
given is, that they belong to ( De Foe, author of the Review, for he 
is turned about, and writes for keeping up the public credit/ " 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 369 

From this passage, and several others, it would appear that all true 
Whigs were expected to damage the public credit by all the means 
in their power ; and a man who did not do this was a Tory and a 
turncoat, and received all true Whig resentments accordingly. The 
Whigs were nothing to De Foe as a party ; and, in his opinion, 
there was nothing in Whig patriotism in 1711, worthy of sacrificing 
all interests and all feelings, in order to keep them in place. He wrote 
a paper on national questions, and it was his duty to serve the nation, 
whether Whig or Tory happened to be chancellor of the exchequer 
or prime minister. De Foe did this ; and lost the estimation of the 
Whigs, and was called and treated as a Tory. 

I believe at this time of commotion, De Foe acted a truly honest 
and patriotic part, as the pages of his Review will testify. We have 
just seen two cases of Whig injustice acted against him, because he 
supported the national credit; and was in consequence a Tory. I 
have before me a letter in the Examiner (Swift's paper), where De 
Foe is alluded to as " the Review, the censor of Great Britain ; who 
resembles the famous censor of Rome in nothing but in espousing 
the cause of the vanquished, with the crowd of hireling scribblers, 
who hope, by a few false colours, and a great many impudent asser- 
tions, at last to persuade the people that the General (Marlborough), 
the quondam Treasurer (Godolphin), and the Junto, are the only 
objects of the confidence of the allies, and of the fears of the enemies 
of the Queen, and the whole body of the British nation : — Nos 
numerus sumus" 

On the disgrace of Harley, and the immediate prospect of the 
Queen's early demise, Swift skulked off to Beading, in Berkshire, 
where he remained till the Queen's death, and the dispersion of the 
elements of discord — he himself being the chief. He then retired to 
his prostituted ill-gotten deanery of St. Patrick's — his thirty-pieces- 
of-silver reward of iniquity ; where he remained for the rest of his 
life, to sow discord amongst brethren, and write Drapier Letters: 
on Wood's copper Birmingham halfpennies, pronounced by Swift, 
with such vehemence, to be fraudulent in weight as well as quality 
of metal, till a Dublin Street beggar dare not receive one as a 
gift, through fear of exciting personal violence from his order, for 

24 



370 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

sacrificing the sacred interests of "Ould Ireland" to the sordid ad- 
vantage of a Birmingham button-maker j intent upon supplying the 
coinage of Ireland from the broken old button stock of his native 
town. 

As Prior was one of this bright constellation of intriguers who 
broke poor Queen Anne's heart by their contentions and dissimu- 
lations, perhaps I could not give a more faithful picture of the 
design and carrying out of this movement, than by quoting Mr. 
Prior's own words, taken from his life ; published after the decease 
of most of the parties concerned : — 

" Mr. Harley and Mr. St. John, long before they were advanced 
to the head of the ministry (in 1710), had entertained thoughts of 
putting an end to the war, and thereby recommending themselves 
to the Queen and the nation. They had privately treated with 
some agents of France ; particularly Mr. St. John with the Sieur 
Gualtier, a French priest; who for some time was protected by 
Count Gallas, and afterwards employed by Count Tallard, then a 
prisoner at Nottingham, to forward letters between him and his 
court. But in 1710, when these gentlemen were brought into full 
play, a paper called the Examiner was immediately set up under 
their influence, and conducted by Mr. Prior, Dr. Swift, Dr. Freind, 
Mrs. Manley, Mr. Olds worth, and some others ; the design of which 
was to aggravate the faults of the late ministry ; to represent them 
as enemies to the church and constitution ; men who delighted in 
war ; and to recommend an immediate pacification, which indeed, 
at that time, began to be much wished for. All the wit, raillery, 
and even invective, that these great men were masters of, was em- 
ployed on this occasion ; and it had in general the desired effect, so 
far as to secure the public voice in their favour. It must be con- 
fessed, that by artfully blending together the words, Church, Queen, 
Loyalty, Peace, on the one side ; and Whig, Junto, Republican, 
Faction, on the other, they had the address to carry everything 
before them, and to involve all the friends of the late ministry in 
their accusation." 

It was in 1708, the year before Swift was employed by Harley 
and St. John to support the Sacheverell agitation, by writing the 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 371 

Examiner, that he became politically acquainted with these men, 
by writing a pamphlet entitled " A Letter from a Member of the 
House of Commons in Ireland to a Member of the House of Com- 
mons in England, concerning the Sacramental Test/' in which he 
speaks of De Foe as " one of those authors (the fellow that was 
pilloried, I have forgot his name) is indeed so grave, sententious, 
dogmatical a rogue, that there is no enduring him " — thus showing 
that from 1708 to 1713, De Foe was at his post, doing his duty in 
his Review, by exciting at this time the personal hostility of Pope 
and Swift, the companions and fellow- writers in the Examiner with 
Harley and St. John. 

Poor Tutchin too, a fellow-worker with De Foe, comes in for his 
share of the poetic venom of* Swift and Pope, in — 
Earless on high, stands unabashed De Foe, 
And Tutchin, flagrant from the scourge, below. 
The Earl of Orrery, in his letters on Swift, states that "Swift was 
elated with the appearance of enjoying ministerial confidence. He 
enjoyed the shadow; the substance was detained from him. He 
was employed, not trusted ; and at the same time that he imagined 
himself a subtle diver, who dexterously shot down into the pro- 
foundest regions of politics, he was suffered only to sound the shal- 
lows nearest the shore, and was scarce admitted to descend below 
the froth at the top. Perhaps the deeper bottoms were too muddy 
for his inspection." 

As Swift professed such contempt for De Foe, that he did not 
know his name ; and as the Examiner was especially the work of 
Swift — for forty -five numbers spread over a considerable period of 
time — I have examined the papers by Swift, and I find them poor ; 
far below the papers in De Foe's own Review, written, according to 
the attorney- general's own style of definition, in such u a damned 
satirical way of writing " — a style Jonathan Swift never came up 
to, for exciting interest in his subject, in his Examiner. It may be 
presumptuous in one so inexperienced as myself, to give any opinion 
upon the writings of Jonathan Swift ; be it so ; but yet I have an 
opinion upon this subject, and it is this — that Swift was much 
inferior to De Foe as a prose-writer, where conviction from writing 

24* 



372 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

was more an object than flights of rhetorical display in stringing 
words together, to set off his quickness of thought or memory ; in 
an exhibition of tight-rope dancing displays, in contortions of the 
emanations of the brain. Let any one take the Review and the 
Examiner, and read ; and on reading, pronounce the book. Yes ! 
and take Robinson Crusoe, and read that against the Tale of a Tub. 
Take the Complete Tradesman, and place it against anything Swift 
ever wrote ; and read the True-Born Englishman too ; and the 
History of the Plague ; with the Apparition of Mrs. Veal at Canter- 
bury ; read all or any of these, for interest and instruction ; and 
read them, one or all, against anything or everything written by 
Jonathan Swift, and pronounce which was the better writer. 

As a man, Swift was a brute of a churl, without honour, gra- 
titude, or feeling; and as a writer, he was a quippy slack-wire 
performer, conjurer, or Mister Merryman, capering and throwing 
somersets upon the boards of literature. Yes ! Swift could dance 
the slack- wire, or throw a somerset upon the tight-rope of letters, 
as a grimy, ruddled, pipeclayed buffoon, or Mister Merryman : he was 
a very conjurer in rhetorick ; a man of quips and quirks in language ; 
but, as a writer of the English language, he was far inferior to 
Daniel De Foe. De Foe wrote to inform and improve his race or 
generation ; Swift did not — no ! he wrote to deceive, and received 
his reward — a deanery in the Church of Ireland. De Foe received 
no deaneries; he wrote not for a bishopric, but a gaol — he wrote, 
and received his reward, such as it was. He stood in the pillory, 
and one — (immortality rest upon his name) — one Finch put him 
there. Finch immortal /—illustrious name in the fusty, mouldering 
archives of bigotry and intolerance — a name, whether John, Thomas, 
or Robert, I care not to inquire — but Finch illustrious ! down to 
our time, from keeping Daniel De Foe twelve months in Newgate ; 
and placing the wooden ruff about his neck at Temple Bar or Tyburn 
Gate ; because he would not pronounce the two significant words of 
propelling power — Robert Harley. 

Of his treatment from this man Finch, De Foe thus speaks : — 
" Having him at this advantage (a promise of pardon if he would 
plead guilty), they set upon him their emissaries, to discover to 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 373 

them his adherents, as they called them, and promised him great 
things on one hand, threatening him with his utter ruin on the 
other; and the great scribe (the Attorney- General, Sir Simon Har- 
court) of the country, with another of their great courtiers, took 
such a low step as to go to him to the dungeon, where they had put 
him, to see if they could tempt him to betray his friends. The 
comical dialogue between them there, the author of this has seen in 
manuscript, exceedingly diverting ; but, having not time to translate 
it, His omitted for the present ; though he promises to publish it in 
its proper season, for public instruction. However, for the present, 
it may suffice to tell the world, that neither by promises of reward, 
nor fear of punishment, could they prevail upon him to discover 
anything; and so it remains a secret to this day." No doubt re- 
mains as to the fact of there being an accomplice, who directed him 
upon the occasion; for allusion is made to the fact repeatedly in 
De Foe's several writings. A tool he had been ; and he had been 
neglected on the occasion of his imprisonment by some one. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

At this time the new ministers proposed to levy a tax of one penny 
upon every half-sheet of printed newspaper and pamphlet ; in order 
to weight them out of existence, and sink all the small fry of news- 
papers and pamphlets together ; for at this time, all sorts of trash, 
in the way of broadsheet and pamphlet, inundated the land, on all 
questions of a political or public nature. 

De Foe took up the matter of stifling the press by taxation, in his 
Review, and wrote freely upon the iniquity of the project ; in the 
eighth volume, p. 5, he says, that " he who will speak at all, must 
speak quickly ; and he that has but little to speak, ought to speak 
to the purpose. It will be a brand upon any cause, that attempts 
to suppress printing ; and it will leave it upon record to the infamy 
of the party that espouses it, as not able to bear the energy and force 
of truth j and it is fairly acknowledging that their practices, whether 
in politics or morals, will not bear the light. It is not only an 
infringement of the liberty of the subject, which this nation has 
always been chary of, but it has something of that arbitrary cruelty 
in it which resembles a late barbarous practice of the same party in 
Scotland ; who, when they had the power in their hands, and exer- 
cised it with fury and blood, caused the drums to beat when the 
poor victims they were sacrificing came to die, that the testimony 
of their innocence in a dying hour, might not be heard or known 
by the abused spectators. A design to suppress printing, on either 
side, can be nothing but a plot to stifle truth ; . since, if falsity, 
scandal, slander, or anything that merits reprehension, is published, 
the laws are already strong against them ; and if in anything defec- 
tive, may be easily amended. But to lay an universal load upon 
everything, or, in plain English, to silence mankind, is a plot against 
the friends of virtue, learning, and religion, as might be made 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 375 

appear on many occasions. Besides, the attempt will not answer 
the end; for, though it may suppress useful things, and rob the 
world of the advantage derived from the labours of honest men, yet 
party rage will break through ; lampoons, pasquinades, and invete- 
rate satires, will swarm more than before, and be diligently handed 
about by parties all over the kingdom ; whose darts will be keener, 
and poison stronger, than anything printed ; and perhaps the more 
so, as they shall be received with more gust by the people oh either 
side." 

" I appeal to any man, who remembers the days of King Charles 
the Second, when the license tyranny reigned over the press, whether 
that age did not abound in lampoons and satires that wounded, and 
at last went far in ruining, the parties they were pointed at, more 
than has ever been practised since the liberty of the press. He that 
does not know it, must be very ignorant of those times, and has 
heard very little of Andrew Marvel, Sir John Denham, Rochester, 
Buckhurst, and several others, whose wit made the court odious to 
the people, beyond what had been possible if the press had been 
open." 

" To lay a general prohibition on the press, is to suggest that they 
(the ministers) have something to do which they dare not let the 
people hear ; it is to padlock the mouths of the free people of Britain, 
and to deprive men of their fair and just defence. This, I think, 
may merit a consideration by itself. 

"It is to invade the property, livelihood, and employment of 
families innumerable, whose dependence and estates lie in several 
parts of the printing trade, not at all concerned with the govern- 
ment ; but should in common justice be excepted. Among these 
are to be reckoned patents, and properties in smaller books, such 
as almanacks, catechisms, psalms, and little manuals, moral and 
religious ; the copyrights of which are estates to many families, and 
to preserve which right from piracy, a very just and necessary law 
was made in the last Parliament." 

At this time an occurrence took place in the Privy Council 
Chamber, which added greatly to Mr. Harley's power as a minister ; 
and that was his being stabbed by the Marquis de Guiscard, a dis- 



376 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

appointed Frenchman, then being examined before the Privy Coun- 
cil on a charge of high treason. This circumstance called for 
sympathy from all parties, and caused the minister so circumstanced 
to be looked upon as a martyr to the cause of the state. A des- 
perate man had stabbed some one for revenge ; and that some one, 
by chance, happened to be Robert Harley, chancellor of the exche- 
quer; and this gave him great sympathy with the Queen, who 
created him Earl of Oxford and Lord High Treasurer, soon after 
his recovery from a wound which had nearly proved fatal. De Foe 
takes great interest in the event at the time, and sincerely laments 
the circumstance in these words : — " Every man I meet with, how- 
ever prejudices and parties lamentably divide us, speaks of this 
action with abhorrence ; and had it succeeded, God alone can tell 
the confusion that the public affairs must for a time have fallen 
into, under the agitation of so many contending parties." — Review, 
vol. vii. p. 602. 

De Foe, who had for years held a considerable share in Mr. Har- 
ley's confidential state appointments of a secret nature, knew his 
character well, and respected the man for the many acts of kindness 
he had received from him ; and so, r on this occasion, published a 
tract entitled " Eleven Opinions about Mr. Harley ; with Observa- 
tions. London : printed for J. Baker, 1711." 

On Mr. Harley's recovery, he introduced a measure for paying 
off the national debt, by trading with the South Seas ; and received 
great applause at the time, for his penetration and sagacity as a 
statesman, in devising such a plan. De Foe took up the subject in 
his Review, and denied Harley's claim to the originating of the 
scheme ; for it had been suggested by the late minister, Godolphin ; 
and, besides that, there was nothing great or original in the under- 
taking : and, besides all this, it was only a scheme which he had 
himself proposed, some years before, to William III., or his minis- 
ters; for in the Review, vol. viii. p. 165, he says: — "I had the 
honour to lay a proposal before his late Majesty King William, in 
the beginning of this war, for carrying the war, not into Old Spain, 
but into America ; which proposal his Majesty approved of, and 
fully proposed to put in execution, had not death, to our unspeak- 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 377 

able grief, prevented him. And yet, I would have my readers dis- 
tinguish with me, that there is always a manifest difference between 
carrying on a war in America, and settling a trade there; and I 
shall not fail to speak distinctly to this difference in its turn. And 
because I purpose to dwell a little upon the subject, and to make 
what I shall say on this head, as far as my capacity, extends, a 
perfect though short compendium, both of the Spanish and English 
commerce as they respect each other, either in Europe or America, 
I shall first lay down what the circumstances of this trade are, how 
carried on, and by whom, and how far we are concerned in them." 

This may be considered a long quotation on an uninteresting 
subject ; it is so ; but yet, as the subject is important, as being the 
first indication of a national movement to what afterwards became 
the Great South-Sea Scheme, which was worked into a scrip bubble 
which involved thousands in trouble, embarrassment, and ruin; 
and, as I believe Daniel De Foe to have been the original projector 
of a South-Sea adventure in the trade, which years afterwards was 
worked up into a swindling project by designing and unscrupulous 
speculators; I should not consider myself justified in passing so 
important an event in British commercial history, in connection 
with Daniel De Eoe, without some notice. Suffice to say, that in 
the September following, he published his connected or digested 
thoughts on this scheme, in a pamphlet entitled " An Essay on the 
South-Sea Trade. London, 1710." 

Poor De Foe, at this time, had a very difficult game to play, 
to please his friends out of office, and his friend Harley in office. 
These two opposing interests he could not serve at the same time ; 
therefore, whatever he wrote at this time was wrong ; either Swift, 
Dr. Drake, Prior, Toland, Sacheverell, and others, on the one hand; 
or Whig scribes, anonymous perhaps, on the other, would find fault 
with him, and with his principles. He was charged with writing 
Whig and Tory papers at the same time; and a writer in the 
Gentleman's Magazine, vol. iii. p. 20, thus speaks of him : — " I 
have heard that Daniel De Foe would write an answer to books 
before they were published; and that once he wrote an answer 
to a book that was never published ; but I never thought that 



378 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Mr. Danvers would have followed the example of so mercenary a 
writer, for whom he takes every occasion to express so great a 
contempt." 

At this time all was party bigotry and subserviency; and De 
Foe, being a political writer, keeping the constitution as his guide, 
always fell foul of these disputants : to-day he was Whig, and con- 
sequently abused by the Tories ; to-morrow he was Tory, and 
therefore abused by the Whigs ; to-day he is neither, therefore he 
must be abused by both ; and, in clearing himself from these im- 
putations, he takes up a considerable portion of the eighth volume 
of his Review. 

As soon as Harley and his party had fairly disposed of all oppo- 
sition at home, they set themselves to intrigue secretly with France 
for a peace, by setting Matthew Prior, as their private negotiator, 
against the French agent, Moses Mesnager; but, the war being 
popular with the people at home, their only chance of success was 
in employing such writers as Swift and Prior to cavil at the expenses 
of the war, and thus lower the Whigs in public estimation ; and, to 
assist the power of contention, the drum-ecclesiastic was beaten to 
the same tune. In this state of party warfare, Mr. Maynwaring 
published some Reflections on a Quotation out of the Review, which, 
of course, brought De Foe into the field again, as a writer, in his 
Review, vol. viii. pp. 345, 354, 366, 370, 375—394, on the partition 
of Spain between France and Austria, its advantages, disadvantages, 
necessities, and the like — papers and quotations which would alone 
make up a very tolerable volume, about as interesting and as intel- 
ligible to us, as the asseverations and vagaries of a loyal member 
of a country Pitt Club of our time. But poor King William of 
glorious memory, De Foe's especial patron, coming in, of course, for 
his share of abuse, to assist the party warfare, De Foe, in his defence, 
published, in December of this year, "The Felonious Treaty; or, 
an Enquiry into the Reasons which moved his late Majesty King 
William of Glorious Memory, to enter into a Treaty at two several 
times with the King of France, for the Partition of the Spanish 
Monarchy. With an Essay, proving that it was always the sense, 
both of King William and of all the Confederates, and even of the 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 379 

Grand Alliance itself, that the Spanish Monarchy should never be 
united in the person of the Emperor. By the Author of the Review. 
London, printed and sold by J. Baker. 1711. Price sixpence." 
As the whole is the Partition Treaty over again, with all its pros 
and eons, Whig readings, and Tory readings, I will, out of com- 
passion to the feelings of my reader, miss the whole ; for they are 
only the modern Pitt- Club vagaries over again : I mean for us now 
in the year 1859 ; when light reading and illustrated trash take up 
the whole of public consideration in the reading way — in slang ; or 
a man's cutting his wife's throat with a Sheffield whittle, 12mo, 
and only fourpence ! The stand made by De Foe for the late King 
William, only raised a storm of Whig and Tory detractors in the 
press; so De Foe wrote in his Review of Nov. 20, 1711: — "The 
humour of the times is a mighty stream, and we find few that can 
resist it. The reason is, that it is a dangerous port, full of rocks 
and shoals to split on ; and not one in twenty ventures the danger- 
ous voyage, but will be lost in the attempt. Every side is against 
him. If his courage bears up a while, his reputation will sink ; one 
side says, he is mercenary, and gone over to the enemy ; the other 
side says, he is coming over to them, but, not knowing why, thinks 
him fickle; those that think him honest, say he is mad; so, in 
short, the man is lost on every side, and no wonder so few dare stand 
the brush. I am one of those unhappy few, who, guided, as I hope, 
by truth, and unconcerned at reproach, which men blindly throw 
out on every side, stand fast in the defence of that true interest of 
my country, which, I bless God from the bottom of my soul, I 
espoused in my youth, and never could be frighted by parties, nor 
bribed by persuasions, no, not of the greatest in the nation. I con- 
fess I defend it now under very unhappy circumstances, viz., that 
they say the French and I argue for the same thing; the Tory 
interest is wrapped up in my argument; and — rash men! — some 
will have it I am turned high-flyer." The ministers being anxious 
for peace with France, and being anxious, too, to oppress the dis- 
senters; but fearing the House of Lords, which had, from the 
Restoration, perhaps, or at any rate from the glorious Revolution 
of 11388, carried the whole belligerent force of British constitutional 



380 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

principles within its walls : for the Commons, for a great portion of 
this period, were utterly helpless, so far as the assertion or defence 
of a living principle could exist, in a national senate, or chamber of 
delegates; or the constituted trustees of a nation's rights and interests. 
For much of this period the Commons of England lay utterly pros- 
trate before the patronizing and bribing powers of the court of 
France ; for many of the members received bribes from the French 
King ; and other members were kept to their fidelity by the prospect 
of receiving French bribes themselves. For principle, the English 
House of Commons was utterly corrupt — utterly rotten — utterly 
French — French in interest, because French in pay. Well, the 
Harley government of 1711 made twelve new peers in one day; 
and threatened to make a dozen more if the House should not be 
sufficiently pliant with the first creation. This swamping of the 
House by creating new peers appeared to have the desired effect ; 
for a bill for oppressing the dissenters passed in three days, by a 
general concurrence of Whigs and Tories. De Foe, in his Review, 
vol. viii. p. 473, observes : — M The case of the dissenters is circum- 
stanced too similarly (the hand of Brutus being raised against 
Caesar) ; this mortal state could have been received from no hand 
but that of a friend (a Whig). The dissenters in England, as 
they stood united in interest with the Low Churchmen, could 
have received no fatal blow but from themselves. Three times 
the united power of their enemies had attacked them, and could 
never prevail ; but given up by their friends (the Whigs) they fall 
of course." 

This blow at the dissenters was entitled " An Act for preserving 
the Protestant Religion, by better securing the Church of England 
as by law established ; and for confirming the Toleration granted to 
Protestant Dissenters by an Act, entitled &c, and for supplying the 
Defects thereof; and for the further securing the Protestant Suc- 
cession, &c." The dissenters received a severe blow by this measure, 
got up by Harley, St. John, Harcourt, and others, the ministers; their 
object in passing such a measure against the dissenters at this time 
being ominous; and foreboding evil to civil and religious liberty; 
for this was the time of all others when the dissenters should have 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 381 

been encouraged and supported ; if for nothing but a sense of grati- 
tude for past services in 1688, at the glorious Revolution ; and as a 
check to the threatened inroad from the bigoted Pretender James III., 
waiting his opportunity to subject this dominion to Popish super- 
stition and priestly domination; with arbitrary power, springing 
from his supposed divine right of kingship. 

This act was most oppressive, and exclusive in spirit ; and, as De 
Foe says in his Review, " a blow by which they [the dissenters] are 
excluded from the common concern of fellow-subjects, in the trusts 
and advantages of the society they live in; by which they are treated 
as aliens and strangers in the commonwealth, or as persons danger- 
ous to be trusted by the government they have so faithfully and so 
largely contributed to support." 

It is utterly impossible for any impartial observer to take a glance 
at the Harley administration in 1711, without being fully impressed 
with the conviction, that that administration was bent upon mis- 
chief; so far as the rights of civil and religious liberty, and the 
rights of the Hanoverian succession, were concerned. Their first 
act was to raise the property qualification for a county member of 
Parliament to £600 per annum, which was a blow struck at the 
mercantile and banking interests of the city of London ; it was a 
disfranchising of the City moneyed interest, which was, for the most 
part, a Whig and dissenting interest. This, as far as it went, was 
a lift to the pretensions of the Pretender, James III. Their next 
act was to intrigue with France for a peace, which was against the 
national feeling at the time, which had to be overcome by the writing 
of Dean Swift, Prior, and other hired scribes ; and for carrying on 
this peace project, the House of Lords had to be gagged by the 
creation of a dozen new peers in one day, and a threat of a second 
dozen, if the Lords were not good and dutiful subjects of Harley, 
St. John, and Company — the ministers ; and, on the day of this 
peer-creating, the Duke of Marlborough, the head of the Whig party, 
was dismissed from all his employments. All these circumstances, 
being combined in one twelve months of legislation, would imply a 
policy which was opposed to the rights of conscience and the rights 
of civil libertv. 



382 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Dissenters were cut off from all civil employments ; and no person 
employed by the government was to enter a conventicle under the 
penalty of loss of place, and a fine of ,£40 j and this bill passed the 
Commons in three days, and received the royal assent in eight days 
from its first introduction to the Lords. Against this tyranny on 
the part of the government, and ingratitude on the part of the 
Whigs, De Foe wrote fearlessly in his Review, and, addressing the 
Whigs, he says, in the eighth volume, p. 466 : — 

" You are against a peace ; will you fortify your political interests 
by giving up for a prey, those [the dissenters] you have so long 
espoused, both in their civil and religious liberties ? Methinks I 
see some people abroad, whose characters have for some years been 
adorned with the word patriot, strangely easy to give up all these 
things, that they may but strengthen their party interest. But this 
is not the first time that some people [Whigs] who call themselves 
friends to the dissenters, have offered to sacrifice them to their 
enemies, upon very mean conditions. 

"If persecuting laws are set up; and the liberty of dissenters, 
established at the Revolution, is attempted; God forbid that I 
should cease, though humbly, to complain of the injury, let what 
human authority soever prohibit it. If they make it criminal, I 
am ready to suffer; but I will never lose my little share in the 
liberties of my country, without crying out against both the mischief 
and the contrivers of it, let them be who they will." 

To avert the threatened bill, De Foe published " An Essay on the 
History of Parties and Persecution in Britain, &c. London, printed 
by J. Baker, 1711." 

How true are the words of Solomon, that a fool ground in a 
mortar will come out fool ground ! This proverb was never better 
illustrated than in the case of Queen Anne, who was a very weak 
woman, narrow and bigoted as her father ; for he was a fool, so that 
she was the daughter of a fool, and she was the grand- daughter of 
a fool ; and she was, moreover, great-grand- daughter of James I., be 
he what he might. This silly woman was at war with Louis XIV. 
of France, and had been for years, because Louis would not acknow- 
ledge her title of Queen : he affirming, that she was not Queen of 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



383 



England by right of hereditary succession ; he called her an usurper, 
and treated her as such ; and war was the consequence between the 
two countries ; and, before peace could be entered upon at the con- 
ference of Utrecht, the very first step towards negotiation on the 
part of England, was a declaration drawn up by the Queen's 
ministers, for acknowledgment by the French court, to the effect 
that Queen Anne's title to the throne of these realms rested upon 
the authority of an act of Parliament. I will give the specific 
demands made by the English court of the French court, as the 
groundwork of negotiation at the convention of Utrecht : — 

"The Most Christian King [Louis] shall acknowledge, in the 
clearest and strongest terms, the succession to the crown of Great 
Britain, according as it is limited by acts of Parliament/' &c. 

Again : " The Most Christian King shall promise besides, as well 
for himself as for his heirs and successors, never to acknowledge any 
person for King or Queen of Great Britain other than her Majesty 
now reigning, and those kings or queens who shall succeed her by 
virtue of the above-said acts of Parliament." 

This was the very groundwork of all negotiation; and the re- 
cognition of this document and the royal signature of France 
(Louis XIV.) to the treaty of peace founded on this preliminary, 
was the acknowledgment of the court of France to the constitutional 
principle of the British government, " that the people are the source 
of all legitimate power within these realms." The blood of Charles I. 
sealed this bond on the scaffold, in Westminster. The abdication of 
James II., at the Revolution of 1688, sealed this bond; and now, 
at the peace of Utrecht in 1713, the signature of Louis XIV. is 
another witness added to the same document, which acknowledges 
the sovereignty of the people in England : for in England the people 
are the source of all legitimate power. This is the fundamental law 
of the British constitution ; yet, since the accession of Harley and 
Company, — for he is decidedly the first in the firm of fraud, trick, 
and rascality, in obtaining power in order to oppress the people, and 
obtain ends through that oppression, not very clearly defined, — 
though great preparations were made this year for something, and 
these preparations consisted in removing or changing the lord lieu- 



384 LIFE OF DK FOE. 

tenants and magistracy, and all offices, however remote or insig- 
nificant, dependent upon the ministry, or their confidential partisans 
— the High-Church Tories. It was under this system of fortifying 
the position, that the ministry introduced their Church-of-England- 
securing Bill — that bill I am now writing upon, which enacted that 
after 25th of March, 1712, any person receiving the emoluments of 
patent, grant, place of trust or profit, civil or military, under the 
English government, meeting for worshipping God, where ten per- 
sons should assemble; at a conventicle, should be liable to a penalty 
of JB40; and, on conviction, be adjudged incapable from thenceforth 
of holding any office or employment whatsoever. The ministry took 
every step they could to organize their party for some particular 
move ; but were disturbed from time to time, both in the Lords and 
in the Commons, by certain independent members introducing a 
resolution affirming the vitality of the act of Parliament passed by 
William III. in 1701, limiting the succession to the throne of 
Great Britain to the Protestant line of Hanover. This was done in 
the Lords by the Duke of Devonshire; and in the Commons, by 
Mr. Richard Hampden, member for Buckingham; and this thing 
might be done by other members. These periodical declaratory 
resolutions on a fundamental bulwark of British liberty, and British 
security, in a critical period; when a very weak, narrow-minded, 
bigoted woman filled the throne, and she surrounded by wicked, 
designing, intriguing, unprincipled men, as her ministers and ad- 
visers; were highly judicious and prudent, but extremely incon- 
venient to the ministers, unprepared either to divide the House 
upon the question by a direct negative ; or, what would have been 
equally as injurious to themselves and their cause, such an evasion 
of the declaration as would only show their feelings and intentions, 
and betray their weakness or inability to carry their designs, if they 
had any. 

This resolution of the right of the succession to the crown by 
the Elector of Hanover, having been conferred by the act of 1701, 
could not, in the opinion of the guardians of British liberty, be too 
frequently thrown upon the two Houses of Parliament; and these 
indorsed by them, by direct resolutions confirmatory of this act; 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 385 

limiting the right of succession. Harley, like a true son of quirk 
and quibble, readily fell in with what he could not avoid; and so 
heartily responded to the Duke of Devonshire's resolution con- 
firming the act of 1701 ; and ministers in the Commons as heartily 
supported the same resolution, when introduced by Mr. Richard 
Hampden. Opposition would have been useless ; therefore a hearty 
acquiescence in a declared opinion was both safe and politic. There 
can be no doubt but this ministry were preparing for some great 
measure of oppression — something adverse to British liberty; but 
time was not given to them to organize their plans into safe working 
order. 

The Bishop of Oxford, in recording his opinion on the doctrines 
promulgated by Henry Sacheverell in his Fifth -of-November Ser- 
mon, affirmed, in his place in the House of Lords, that — "If clergy- 
men may with impunity publicly in their sermons arraign and 
condemn the Revolution ; besides the restrictions they cast upon 
all the worthy patriots that were concerned in that great work, the 
commonality, gentry, and nobility, lords upon every bench in this 
House; besides this, it must shake, it must sap the very foundations 
of our present establishment, as it stands upon the foot of the 
Revolution, and utterly destroy our future hopes in the Protestant 
succession, which is founded upon that bottom only." 

On the 29th of July, 1712, De Foe closed the eighth volume of 
his Review, as follows: — "I so fully resolved to lay down this paper 
at the end of July, when the new tax upon papers begins, as ever 
I did, or can resolve anything ; and pleased myself with the hopes 
that, after eight years' struggling with the enemies of the nation's 
peace, to have enjoyed some peace myself; to have dropped insen- 
sibly out of public broils, and, as much as possible, to have been 
forgotten among you. But it is impossible: neither the nature of 
the thing, nor the nature of the people, will permit it. As to the 
people, unless I will give leave to the railing spirit, to triumph over 
me as slain in battle, and let that slander which ceases not to insult 
me while living, follow me to the grave, I must be still at hand to 
detect the lies, and oppose the slanders, with which those who can- 
not otherwise answer me, are daily filling the age. Nor will the 

25 



38G LIFE OF DE FOE. 

nature of the thing permit me to lay it down : the crisis is too im- 
minent, the arguments on both sides too nice, the consequences too 
fatal, the mischiefs approaching too threatening, and the concern 
every honest man has too pressing, for any man that has spoken at 
all, now to hold his peace. He that will save his country from ruin, 
must do it in the season of deliverance ; he that will prevent the 
destruction of a town, must cry ' fire ' in time ; and he that will do 
any service on either side, must now speak, or he may for ever after 
hold his tongue." 

We now come to the preface to the eighth volume of the Review — 
a part of the performance which seldom in this age takes a second- 
ary part in importance ; indeed, we know many books written at 
this period (the year 1700) which are alone valuable for the in- 
trinsic worth of the preface. This is a fact well known to all col- 
lectors of books written about the period we are now writing upon ; 
and it must be my excuse for taking up what might be considered 
an unwarrantable space with the preface to the eighth volume of 
the Review. 

To elucidate the character and times of Daniel De Foe, is my 
object ; and if, by quoting four or five pages of his own writing, I 
can further this object, I must avail myself of the opportunity ; for 
his own words on himself, written at the time, must of necessity 
stand before anything I can pick up about him, after a lapse of one 
hundred and fifty years, as gossip, retailed by Oldmixon, Leslie, 
L'Estrange, Swift, Pope, Prior, Gay, Arbuthnot, Harley, or Boling- 
broke, or any other character, not standing very high for feeling, 
truth, or patriotism. These were the men who wrote of De Foe; 
for Gay, the friend, student, or disciple of Pope, thus expresses him- 
self of De Foe, only a few months after this period, when the Revieiv 
was discontinued altogether, and when De Foe was again immured 
in Newgate for writing another pamphlet for Harley. Really! one 
would have thought De Foe had had experience enough, in 1703, 
in showing the Shortest Way to extirpate Dissenters, without trying 
to extirpate the claims of the house of Hanover, for the same mi- 
nister in 1713, and getting into Newgate a second time. Well, this 
Gay remarks: — "The -poor Review is quite exhausted, and grown so 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 387 

very contemptible, that, though he has provoked all his brothess of 
the quill, none will enter into a controversy with him. The fellow, 
who had excellent natural parts, but wanted a small foundation of 
learning, is a lively instance of those wits who, as an ingenious 
author says, will endure but one skimming." So much for Mr. 
Gay, the friend of Pope and Swift. This little circumstance shows 
that from 1703 to 1712 — a period of ten years — Daniel De Foe had 
been writing his eight thick quarto volumes of Review, without being 
degraded by the patronage or friendships of some of the meanest 
men that England ever knew — men talented, but unprincipled; a 
lot to which Gay attached himself. 

I will now take the Preface above alluded to. 

"I have now finished the eighth volume of this work; and as this 
particular part has been the subject of as much clamour and noise 
as any former, though on a different account, and from different 
people, I cannot close it, without giving some account both of it 
and of myself. From the beginning of this undertaking, which I 
have now carried on almost ten years, I have always, according to 
the best of my judgment, calculated it for the support and defence 
of truth and liberty. I was not so weak, when I began, as not to 
expect enemies ; and that by speaking plain, both to persons and 
things, I should exasperate many against both the work and the 
author ; and in that expectation I have not been deceived. 

" I confess I did not expect, that if the same truth summoned me 
to differ from the people I was serving, they would treat me as they 
do, for it. I own I thought an uninterrupted fidelity, and steady 
adhering to an honest principle, for near forty years, would have 
been some plea in my behalf; and if not, that suffering the ship- 
wreck of my fortunes, which were at that time recovering, and, by 
the bounty of his late Majesty, in a fair way of being restored; suf- 
fering all the indignities, penalties, and punishments, an enraged 
party could inflict upon me, and above three thousand pounds loss ; 
I say, I thought this might have lodged a little in the breast of my 
friends, and might have allowed them at least to examine before 
they condemned me, whether they did me wrong or no. 

" I thought that while I had given such proof, that I could neither 

25* 



388 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

be bribed from the truth, or threatened or terrified from my prin- 
ciples, it might at least be a ground for impartial honest men to 
examine before they censured me. But I have found all this in 
vain; and, as if forfeiting my reason as well as my estate were a 
debt from me to the party I espoused, I am now hunted full cry, 
Acteon-like, by my own friends, I won't call them hounds, in spite 
of protested innocence and want of evidence, against the genuine 
sense of what I write, against fair arguing, against all modesty and 
sense ; condemned by common clamour as writing for money, for 
particular persons, by great men's directions, and the like; every 
tittle of which, I have the testimony of my own conscience, is abo- 
minably false, and the accusers must have the accusation of their 
own consciences that they do not know it to be true. 

" I cannot say it has not given me a great deal of disturbance ; 
for an ungrateful treatment by a people that I had run all manner 
of risk for, and thought I could have died for, cannot but touch a 
less sensible temper than I think mine to be; but, I thank God, 
that operation is over; and I endeavour to make other uses of it, 
than perhaps the people themselves think I do. First, I look in, and 
upon the narrowest search I can make of my own thoughts, desires, 
and designs, I find a clear untainted principle, and consequently 
an entire calm of conscience, founded upon the satisfying sense, 
that I neither am touched by bribes, guided or influenced by fear, 
favour, hope, dependence, or reward from any person or party under 
heaven ; and that I have written, and do write, nothing but what 
is my native, free, undirected opinion and judgment, and which was, 
so many years ago, as I think I made unanswerably appear, by the 
very last Review in this volume. Next, I look up, and without 
examining into His ways, the sovereignty of whose Providence I 
adore, I submit with an entire resignation to whatever happens to 
me, as being by the immediate direction of that goodness, and for 
such wise and glorious ends, as, however I may not yet see through, 
will at last issue in good, even to me ; fully depending, that I shall 
yet be delivered from the power of slander and reproach ; and the 
sincerity of my conduct be yet cleared up to the world ; and if not 
— Te Deum laudamus. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 359 

'* In the third place, I look back on the people who treat me thus 
— who, notwithstanding, under the power of their prejudices, they 
fly upon me with a fury that I think unchristian and unjust; yet, 
as I doubt not the day will still come when they will be again 
undeceived in me, I am far from studying their injury, or doing 
myself justice at their expense ; which I could do, with great 
advantage. It is impossible for the dissenters in this nation to 
provoke me to be an enemy to their interest ; should they fire my 
house, sacrifice my family, and assassinate my life, I would ever 
requite them in defending their cause, and standing to the last 
agaiust all those that should endeavour to weaken or reproach it. 
But this is, as I think it, a just and righteous cause, founded upon 
the great principle of Truth and Liberty, which I am well assured 
I shall never abandon. Not that I am insensible of being ill treated 
by them ; or that I make any court to their persons. When any 
party of men have not a clear view of their own case, or a right 
knowledge of their own interest, he that will serve them, and knows 
the way to do it, must be certain not to please them ; and must be 
able to see them revile and reproach him, and use him in the worst 
manner imaginable, without being moved, either to return them 
ill, or refrain from doing them good ; and this is the true meaning 
of that command which I thank God I cheerfully obey, viz., to pray 
for them that despitefully treat me. I have not so ill an opinion of 
myself as not to think I merit better usage from the dissenters ; 
and I have not so ill an opinion of the dissenters, as not to think 
they will some time or other know their friends from their enemies, 
better than they do now. Nor have I so far forgot my friends, as 
not to own a great many of them do already. I remember the time 
when the same people treated me in the same manner, upon the 
book called the Shortest Way, &c. ; and nothing but suffering for 
them would ever open their eyes. He that cleared up my integrity 
then, can do it again by the same method ; and I leave it to him. 
Ad te qucecunque vocas is my rule ; my study and practice is patience 
and resignation; and in this I triumph over all the indignity, 
reproach, slander, and raillery in the world; in this I enjoy, in the 
midst of a million of enemies, a perfect peace and tranquillity ; and 



390 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

• when they misconstruct my words, pervert the best meaning, turn 
everything which I say their own way, it gives me no other contem- 
plation than this : how vain is the opinion of men, either when they 
judge well or ill ! 

" To return to my own case : I am a stoick in whatever may be 
the event of things. I '11 do and say what I think is a debt to jus- 
tice and truth, without the least regard to clamour and reproach ; 
and, as I am utterly unconcerned at human opinion, the people 
who throw away their breath so freely in censuring me, may con- 
sider of some better improvement to make of their passions, than to 
waste them on a man that is both above and below the reach of 
them. I know too much of the world to expect good in it; and 
have learned to value it too little, to be concerned at the evil. I 
have gone through a life of wonders, and am the subject of a vast 
variety of providences ; I have been fed more by miracle than 
Elijah, when the ravens were his purveyors. I have, some time ago, 
summed up the scenes of my life in this distich : — 
No man has tasted differing fortunes more, 
And thirteen times I have been rich and poor. 

(C In the school of affliction I have learnt more philosophy than at 
the academy, and more divinity than from the pulpit ; in prison, I 
have learnt to know that liberty does not consist in open doors, and 
the free egress and regress of locomotion. I have seen the rough 
side of the world as well as the smooth ; and have, in less than half 
a year, tasted the difference between the closet of a king and the 
dungeon of Newgate. I have suffered deeply for cleaving to prin- 
ciples ; of which integrity I have lived to say, none but those I 
suffered for, ever reproached me with it. The immediate causes of 
my suffering have been the being betrayed by those I have trusted, 
and scorning to betray those who trusted me. To the honour of 
English gratitude, I have this remarkable truth to leave behind me 
— that I was never so basely betrayed as by those whose families I 
had preserved from starving ; nor so basely treated as by those I 
starved my own family to preserve. The same checquer-work of 
fortune attends me still : the people I have served, and love to serve, 
cut my throat every day, because I will not cut the throats of those 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 391 

that have served and assisted me. Ingratitude has always been my 
aversion ; and perhaps, for that reason, it is my exercise. 

"And now I live under universal contempt, which contempt I 
have learned to contemn; and have an uninterrupted joy in my 
soul, not at my being contemned, but that no crime can be laid to 
my charge, to make that contempt my due. Fame, a lying jade, 
would talk me up, for I know not what of courage ; and they call 
me a fighting fellow. I despise flattery ; I profess to know nothing of 
it farther than truth makes any man bold; and I acknowledge, that 
give me but a bad cause, and I am the greatest coward in the world. 
Truth inspires nature; and, as in defence of truth no honest man 
can be a coward, so no man of sense can be bold when he is in the 
wrong. He that is honest must be brave ; and it is my opinion 
that a coward cannot be an honest man. In defence of truth, I 
think (pardon me that I dare go no further, for who knows himself?) 
■ — I say, / think I could dare to die ; but a child may beat me if I 
am in the wrong. Guilt gives trembling to the hands, blushing to 
the face, and fills the heart with amazement and terror. I ques- 
tion whether there is much, if any, difference between bravery and 
cowardice, but what is founded in the principle they are engaged 
for ; and I no more believe any man is born a coward, than that he 
is born a knave. Truth makes a man of courage, and guilt makes 
that man a coward. 

" I have a large family — a wife and six children, who never want 
what they should enjoy, or spend what they ought to save. Under 
all these circumstances, and many more, too long to write, my only 
happiness is this : I have always been kept cheerful, easy, and quiet, 
enjoying a perfect calm of mind, clearness of thought, and satisfac- 
tion not to be broken in upon by whatever may happen to me. If 
any man ask me how I arrived to it ? I answer him, in short, by 
a constant serious application to the great, solemn, and weighty 
work of resignation to the will of Heaven ; hj which let no man 
think I presume," 

The Treaty of Utrecht was signed on the lith of April, 1713, and 
caused great dissatisfaction in the nation, particularly amongst the 
Whig party, who considered the country as betrayed by the ministry 



392 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 



for the interests of France and the Pretender ; and this dissatisfac- 
tion was not confined to England and the Whigs ; for " the astonish- 
ment, indignation, and scorn, with which the plan of peace contained 
in the Queen's speech before mentioned was received in Holland, 
is hardly to be expressed ; but the exceptions the Imperialists made 
to that scheme were fully set forth in a treatise published by order 
of Count Zinzendorf, entitled the Sighs of Europe ; to which an 
answer was soon published, and ascribed to De Foe, f The Groans 
of Great Britain ; being a Second Part to the Groans of Europe, 
London,. 1713. Price one shilling/ The greatest dissatisfaction 
at the peace of Utrecht prevailed ; and it is supposed, that, to 
drown the clamour in this quarter, a counteracting clamour must 
be raised, by an effort, real or pretended, to be made for the Pre- 
tender. This was believed by writers at the time (1713), that, 
although the ministry escaped thus in a mist (a resolution stolen 
in a full House in their favour for the treaty of Utrecht), yet some 
of them rightly foresaw, that this ugly business of trade, which had 
raised so universal a clamour, would at last end in their ruin ; un- 
less prevented by more desperate measures ; which 'tis the general 
opinion, they resolved to pursue. Be that as it may, 'tis certain 
that from this time the hopes of the Pretender's friends were 
wonderfully raised, insomuch that they began publicly to list men 
for his service ; and, on the other hand, addresses from Scotland in 
favour of the lineal succession were kindly received at court." 

It was at this very time that De Foe wrote his three pamphlets, 
on or in favour of the Pretender, for which he was taken up on a 
charge of high treason, and would have been tried on that charge 
but for the intervention of these men, who pardoned him. Could 
De Foe have been hired by Harley and St. John for that work, 
considering that they had already in pay, Swift, Pope, Gay, Ar- 
buthnot, Dyer, Roper ; and Charles Leslie, a host in himself, for 
unscrupulous and anonymous writing — men who did what they 
could to defend the ministers, and lampoon Marlborough, 1 Godol- 

1 It was the policy of Harlej's government to write down any officer in the govern- 
ment, so as to prepare the public mind for the change ; for before the removal of the 
Duke of Marlborough from all his employments, in 1711, " he had been so openly 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 393 

phin, Walpole, and the Whig party. Swift was so conspicuous in 
this service, that the King of Spain and the King of France both 
thanked him, through the Spanish ambassador, for the good service 
he had done for them by his writings ; a compliment which Swift 
took very well. Oldmixon, in an anonymous pamphlet, takes up 
the side of the Whigs, and abuses De Foe for supporting the 
ministers ; and charges him also with advocating a Dutch war. To 
these charges De Foe replies in his Review, vol. viii. p. 825. No 
doubt the ministers had sufficient talent hired to defend their 
measures ; for there was one grand feature in the political working 
of the state machine by Robert Harley. Whether aspiring to the 
Speakership of the House of Commons, or when enjoying the power 
of Lord High Treasurer of England, Harley knew what talent was, 
and what it could do for him, and at what price; and he bought it. 
This minister had brought this nation to such a pitch of degrada- 
tion, by his surrounding the executive as a body-guard with such 
characters as Leslie, Swift, RAdpath, Pope, and the like, that her 
Majesty had to declare, again and again, on the meeting of Parlia- 
ment, " how great a license is taken in publishing false and scanda- 
lous libels, such as are a reproach to any government. This evil 
seems to be grown too strong for the laws now in force (a.d. 1711) ; 
it is, therefore, recommended to you, to find out a remedy equal to 
the mischief." This was the prelude to the tax on pamphlets and 
newspapers. 

The charging De Foe with advocating a war with Holland was 
too absurd to require any reply. De Foe was a free-trader, and 
supported the free-trade resolutions of the Treaty of Utrecht, which 
was quite sufficient for Oldmixon to draw the inference from — that 
a free trade with France must of necessity mean, war to the knife 
with Holland and the Protestantism of Europe. This was the 
reading of De Foe's trading principles, not only of Oldmixon, the 
Whig, but of all the Whig party; as the Whig opposition at this 
time to the book Mercator fully proves. Mercator was a valuable 

attacked and aspersed in printed libels, by the mercenary pens employed and counte- 
nanced by the present managers (ministers?), that his Grace's removal was certainly 
resolved upon many months before it took place." 



394 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

free-trade book, which was published in numbers, the first number 
appearing upon the 26th of May, 1713; and was continued upon 
Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays ; of which Boyer, in his Life 
of Queen Anne, thus speaks, as one only of the great Whig party, 
professing the same sentiments; and declaring them, too, on all 
occasions: — ''This paper [Mercator], upon its first appearance 
abroad, was generally fathered upon the chief manager of the Treaty 
of Commerce, Arthur Moore, supposed to be assisted by the genius 
of Dr. Davenant ; but the latter solemnly disowned his having any 
share in it ; and, indeed, it was soon after discovered to be the pro- 
duction of an ambidextrous mercenary scribbler, Daniel De Foe ; 
employed by the Earl of Oxford, who for this dirty work allowed 
him a considerable weekly salary." 

Oldmixon, in his History of Enyland, vol. iii. p. 519, writing on 
the same subject, observes : — " Foe, as well as the Lord Treasurer, 
had been a rank Presbyterian ; and their genius was so near akin, 
that Harley could not but take him into his confidence as soon as 
he got acquainted with him. He was adored and caressed by that 
mighty statesman, who gave him, as that mercenary said himself, 
to the value of £1000 in one year. Foe's business was only to 
puzzle the cause by mercantile cant and bold sophistry; which 
several eminent merchants and others being apprised thereof, they 
desired that Mr. Martin, bailiff of Southwark, an ingenious, judi- 
cious man, should publish a paper called the British Merchant, which 
came out twice a week ; wherein, with plain reason, and incontested 
matters of fact, he exposed the fallacies, blunders, inconsistencies, 
and ignorance of the hireling Mercator, insomuch that at length 
the thoughts of true Englishmen about commerce — which at first 
were represented to be the effects of discontent and faction, as was 
hinted in the Queen's speech — appeared to be the universal sense of 
all traders." 

Tindal, following in the same strain, observes that " the treaty 
was to be supported at any rate ; the persons concerned in making 
it either could not, or would not, see their mistake ; and the nation 
was to be convinced that, through their great skill in trade, they 
had made an excellent treaty of commerce. To these ends, Daniel 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 395 

De Foe was employed; though as in a weekly paper, published 
some years before, called the Review, he had very often condemned 
the French trade as detrimental to this kingdom. He undertook, 
however, the cause now, and published a paper thrice a week, by the 
title of Mercator, &c. In this paper he undertook to prove that the 
trade to France, though contrary to all experience, had always been 
beneficial to this kingdom, and would be so again, upon the foot of 
the treaty. And, as he had the art of writing very plausibly, and 
those who employed him, and furnished him with materials, had the 
command of all public papers in the Custom-house, he had it in his 
power to do a great deal of mischief, especially among such as were 
unskilled in trade, and, at the same time, very fond of French 
wines, which it was then a crime to be against. Suffice to say, this 
Mercator, advocating a free trade with France, raised the whole 
power of the Whig mercantile interest in England by their pub- 
lishing the British Merchant ; or, Commerce Preserved" And all 
this in opposition to Daniel De Foe and his paper the Mercator ! 

These old Whig times remind me of oppositions at a more recent 
period, when great and small attended at their townhalls, to cut 
down or crush in the bud, Richard Cobden and the Anti- Corn-Law 
League at Manchester. It brings to mind one Dr. Holland, and 
his patron, Mr. Beckett Denison, M.P. for Yorkshire. Such a dis- 
play of names — Lord Halifax and General Stanhope ; Sir Charles 
Cooke, merchant ; Sir Theodore Jansen, Bart. ; James Milner, 
Theodore Torriano, Joshua Gee, Christopher Haynes, with David 
Martin, merchants ; and Charles King, merchant too ! Why, really; 
it is Doncaster Theatre and Beckett Denison all over ! 

The very fourth number of the British Merchant, the property of 
the above merchant princes, thus expresses itself ■ — 

" Mr. Daniel De Foe may change his name from Review to Mer- 
cator — from Mercator to any other title; yet still his singular 
genius shall be distinguished by his inimitable way of writing/' 

In Appeal to Honour and Justice, p. 47, De Foe thus speaks on 
this subject : — 

" There is a mighty charge against me, for being the author and 
publisher of a paper called the Mercator. I '11 state the fact first, 



398 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

and then speak to the subject. It is true, that being desired to give 
my opinion in the affair of the commerce with France, I did, as I 
often had done in print many years before, declare, that it was my 
opinion we ought to have an open trade with France, because I did 
believe we might have the advantage by such trade; and of this 
opinion I am still. What part I had in the Mercator is well known; 
and would men answer with argument, and not with personal abuses, 
I would, at any time, defend any part of the Mercator which was of 
my doing. But to say the Mercator was mine, is false : I neither 
was the author of it, nor had the property, printing, or profit of it. 
I had never any payment or reward for writing any part of it ; nor 
had I the power of putting what I would into it ; yet the whole 
clamour fell upon me, because they knew not who else to load with 
it. And when they came to answer, the method was, instead of 
argument, to threaten and reflect upon me, reproach me with 
private circumstances and misfortunes, and give language which no 
Christian ought to give, and which no gentleman ought to take. I 
thought any Englishman had the liberty to speak his opinion in 
such things ; for this had nothing to do with the public. The press 
was open to me as well as to others ; and how or when I lost my 
English liberty of speaking my mind, I know not ; neither how my 
speaking my opinion without fee or reward, could authorize them 
to call me villain, rascal, traitor, and such opprobrious names. 

" It was ever my opinion, that were our wool kept from France, 
and our manufactures spread there upon reasonable duties, all the 
improvement which the French have made in the woollen manu- 
facture would decay, and in the end be little worth; and, conse- 
quently, the hurt they could do us by them would be of little 
moment. It was my opinion, that the ninth article of the Treaty 
of Commerce was calculated for the advantage of our trade; let 
who will make it, that is nothing to me. My reasons are, because 
it tied up the French to open the door to our manufactures at a 
certain duty of importation there; and left the Parliament of Britain 
at liberty to shut theirs out by as high duties as they pleased here : 
there being no limitations upon us as to duties on French goods, but 
that other nations should pay the same. While the French were 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 397 

thus bound, and the British free, I always thought we must be in a 
condition to trade to advantage, or it must be our own fault. This 
is my opinion still ; and I would venture to maintain it against any 
man, upon a public stage, before a jury of fifty merchants, and 
venture my life upon the cause, if I were assured of fair play in the 
dispute. But, that it was my opinion, that we might carry on a 
trade with France to our great advantage, and that we ought for 
that reason to trade with them, appears in the third, fourth, fifth, 
and sixth volumes of the Review, above nine years before the Mercator 
was thought of. I was not thought criminal to say so then ; how it 
comes to be villanous to say so now, God knows ; I can give no 
account of it. I am still of the same opinion ; and shall never be 
brought to say otherwise, unless I see the state of trade so altered 
as to change my opinion ; and if ever I do, I shall be able to give 
good reasons for it. 

" The answer to these things, whether mine or no, was all pointed 
at me ; and the arguments were generally in the terms, villain, 
rascal, miscreant, liar, bankrupt, fellow, hireling, turncoat, &c. What 
the arguments were bettered by these methods, I leave others to 
judge of. Also, most of those things in the Mercator, for which I 
had such usage, were such as I was not the author of. I do grant, 
had all the books which have been called by my name, been written 
by me, I must of necessity have exasperated every side, and perhaps 
have deserved it. But I have the greatest injustice imaginable in 
this treatment, -as I have in the perverting the design of what I have 
really written." 

At this time, De Foe also published another pamphlet, advocating 
free-trade principles, entitled "An Essay on the Treaty of Com- 
merce with France; with necessary Expositions, Proverbs xviii. 12. 
London, printed for J. Baker. 1713. 8vo." In this pamphlet, De 
Foe advocates free-trade principles, as might be expected, from the 
position he was taking at the time — on the Treaty of Commerce 
with France, on the settlement of the Treaty of Utrecht. 

Another pamphlet appeared at this time, entitled "A Letter from 
a Member of the House of Commons to his Friend in the Country, 
relating to the Bill of Commerce ; with a true Copy of the Bill, and 



398 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

an exact List of all those who voted for and against engrossing it. 
London, printed and sold by J. Baker. 1713. 8vo. :" also ascribed 
to De Foe by some opponent, supposed to be Oldmixon, who wrote 
u Remarks on a scandalous Libel, entitled * A Letter from a Mem- 
ber of Parliament, relating to the Bill of Commerce.' In which the 
Trade with France is considered, and the Falsities and Absurdities 
of the Mercator are exposed. To which is added, a Caution to the 
Freeholders of Great Britain in their approaching Elections ; and 
an exact List of this House of Commons, under several Distinctions. 
London, A. Baldwin, 1713 : 8vo." The writer of the above is very 
severe on De Foe, whom he professes to answer on his free- trade 
principles. 

We will now return to the charge laid against Daniel De Foe, of 
being an advocate of a Dutch war. Really, the thing is too absurd 
to be replied to — for all De Foe's sympathies through a long poli- 
tical life had been in favour of a league, or union, or combination 
of the Protestantism of Europe against Popish aggression ; whether 
proceeding from France, Italy, or Spain. A charge of this kind 
could only be wilful annoyance thrown at the man, for some feeling 
of revenge, great or small — a principle or a hat better than that 
worn by the low street miscreant who could throw the dirt. De Foe 
was an advocate for the combination of the vitality of Protestantism 
against all aggressions on civil and religious liberty, which he justly 
considered to be expected, in one form or other, under the pretext 
or pretence of a conformity in religion; a shackling of the free 
limbs of the vitality of Protestantism ; for the sake of restricting the 
free agency of action, and the power of locomotion; for an end — 
the raising of arbitrary power upon the wreck of civil and religious 
liberty. De Foe an advocate for a Dutch war ! Let him speak for 
himself in his own Review — his newspaper ; which had now reached 
825 pages of the eighth volume — let him speak : — 

" If it be, as some pretend, in the last foreign news, that we are 
now running headlong into a war with the Dutch — which I look 
upon as the worst circumstance that can befall this nation — I shall 
convince those who would maliciously suggest me to be writing for 
it, that they are in the wrong. It has been all along my argument, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 399 

and I have seen no answer to it, that Britain and Holland are the 
essential strength of the Protestant interest in Europe ; and in that 
respect their interests are inseparable. It is for uniting these that 
I have always pleaded against the union of Spain with any Popish 
power in Europe. I appeal to all who read what I write, that the 
dividing this great prize has been my aim all along, though re- 
proached and misunderstood. The safety and prosperity of the 
Protestant interest depend upon the joint power of the confederated 
Protestants ; and this must be built upon the union of the British 
and Dutch." 



CHAPTER IX. 

Of the peace of Utrecht there were the greatest complaints ; for 
the ministers had sacrificed the true interests of England to those 
of France, in allowing the Bourbons of France to retain the whole 
Spanish monarchy, instead of the half, as designed by the Partition 
Treaty of William III. : thus giving a preponderance to the Popish 
party in Europe over the combined influence of Protestantism : a 
thing much to be deplored by the well-wishers to the vitality of 
Protestantism in Europe, as a barrier to the encroachments of 
Papistry, and the strangling, by religious usurpations, all freedom 
of thought ; and, with it, all civil and religious liberty. 

The peace of Utrecht, De Foe deplored — as much as any English- 
man could deplore, the increase thus given to the strengthening of 
the aggressive power of the French monarchy ; but what could he 
do more ? He was not minister, neither was he connected with the 
ministry, beyond giving his opinion on a free-trade treaty of com- 
merce with France ; after the treaty of Utrecht had been disposed 
of altogether. If De Foe had been prime minister of England, he 
could not have received more of the malignity of the Whig party, 
than he did receive ; and this when neither Swift nor Pope knew 
the man by his name ; beyond the fellow who had had his ears cut 
off ; or who had stood in the pillory. Never was man so basely 
used as Daniel De Foe ; his talent was made the scapegoat for all 
talent which could not at once be fixed upon its* real owner; and 
this, too, for the greater portion of his life. He had to stand re- 
sponsible for all the anonymous talent of his age. Steele, Davenant, 
and others, might write, and write what they pleased too ; and yet, 
with a little caution on their parts, in concealing their names, the 
productions of the pen, however offensive, or however debasing, 
could be fathered upon the ready wit of Daniel De Foe. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 401 

In his Appeal to Honour and Justice, p. 23, he thus writes : — 

" This was the peace I always argued for, pursuant to the design 
of King William in the Treaty of Partition ; and to that article of 
the grand alliance which was directed by the same glorious hand, 
at the beginning of this last war; viz., that all we should conquer in 
the Spanish West Indies should be our own. This was with a true 
design that England and Holland should have turned their naval 
power, which was eminently superior to that of France, to the con- 
quest of the Spanish West Indies ; by which the channel of trade 
and return of bullion, which now enriches the enemies of both, had 
been ours ; and as the wealth, so the strength, of the world had 
been in Protestant hands. Spain, whoever had it, must then have 
been dependent upon us. The house of Bourbon would have found 
it so poor without us, as to be scarce worth fighting for ; and the 
people so averse to them, for want of this commerce, as not to make 
it ever likely that France could keep it. 

" This was the foundation I ever acted upon with relation to the 
peace. It is true, that when it was made, and could not be other- 
wise, I thought our business was to make the best of it ; and rather 
to inquire what improvements were to be made of it, than to be 
continually exclaiming at those who made it ; and where the ob- 
jection lies against this part, I cannot see. While I spoke in this 
manner, I bore infinite reproaches from clamouring pens, of being 
in the French interest, being hired and bribed to defend a bad 
peace, and the like ; and most of this was upon a supposition of my 
writing, or being the author of, -abundance of pamphlets, which 
came out every day, and which I had no hand in. And indeed, as 
I shall observe again, this was one of the greatest pieces of injustice 
that could be done me, and which I labour still under, without any 
redress : that, whenever any piece comes out which is not liked, I 
am immediately charged with being the author ; and very often the 
first knowledge I have had of a book being published, has been 
from seeing myself abused for being the author, in some other 
pamphlet, published in answer to it." 

This being the state of things at this time (1713), De Foe gave 
up writing altogether, except in his Review ; but not, I think, till 

26 



402 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

after he had written — 1. "An Answer to the Question that Nobody 
thinks of, viz., But what if the Queen should die? London, printed 
for J. Baker, 1713 : pp.44." — 2. "Reasons against the Succession 
of the House of Hanover ; with an Inquiry how far the Abdication 
of King James, supposing it to be legal, ought to affect the Person 
of the Pretender. Si populus vult decipi, decipiatur. London, 
printed for J. Baker, 1713: pp.45."— 3. "And what if the Pre- 
tender should come ? or, some Considerations of the Advantages 
and real Consequences of the Pretender's possessing the Crown of 
Great Britain. London, printed for J. Baker, 1713 : 8vo." 

Prom a very careful perusal of two of these most important tracts, 
" An Answer to a Question that Nobody thinks of, viz., But what 
if the Queen should die?" and "Reasons against the Succession 
of the House of Hanover," I have arrived at the conclusion that 
De Foe's object was not only honest, but truly patriotic, in writing 
those two pamphlets. I mention the two only, because the third I 
have not seen ; for be it remembered, that many of De Foe's more 
exciting small productions of the pen have been destroyed ; so that 
it is very difficult to obtain a sight of them on any terms. His 
object was to arouse the people of England to a sense of their 
danger; in the event of the death of the Queen. This was done 
only a very few months before the Queen did die; and at a time 
when her Majesty's health was in a very precarious condition ; and 
all the world were running mad with jure-divino and passive- 
obedience doctrines, enunciated from the pulpit and the press. 

As a Mr. William Benson started an impeachment, and as one of 
our judges stated in open court, that De Foe had subjected himself 
to be hanged, drawn, and quartered as a traitor ; and as I believe 
De Foe to have been a truly honest man, and fearless patriot, I am 
compelled to give a larger amount of extract from these books than 
I otherwise should have given ; to prove the honesty as well as dis- 
interested patriotism of the writer. Mind ! De Foe in Newgate on 
a charge of high treason is my defence for long extracts ; feeling, 
as I do, that short ones would not do justice to an honest man, and 
a great patriot. 

"That we are to have a peace; or that the peace is made 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 403 

[Utrecht] ; what sort of peace ; or how it has been brought about ; 
these are questions the world begins to have done with ; they have 
been so much, so often, and to so little purpose, bandied about, and 
tossed like a shuttlecock from one party to another, the parties 
themselves begin to want breath to rail and throw scandal. Roper 
and Ridpath throw dirt at one another so long, and grope into so 
many jakes up to their elbows to find it, that they stink now in the 
nostrils of their own party. They are become perfectly nauseous 
to read ; the nation is surfeited of them ; and the people begin to 
be tired with ill using one another. Would any tolerable face 
appear upon things, we might expect the people would be inclined 
to be easy; and were the eyes of some great men open, they may 
see this was the opportunity they never had before ; to make the 
nation easy, and themselves safe. The main thing which agitates 
the minds of men now, is the Protestant succession and the Pre- 
tender. Much pains have been taken on both sides, to amuse the 
world about this remaining dispute : one side to make us believe it 
is safe, and the other to convince us it is in danger. Neither side 
hath been able to expatiate upon the part they affirm. Those who 
say the Protestant succession is secure, have not yet shown us any 
step taken since these new transactions, for its particular security. 
Those who say it is in danger, have not so clearly determined, even 
among themselves, from what particular head of public management 
that danger chiefly proceeds. Both these uncertainties serve to 
perplex us, and to leave the thing more undetermined than consists 
with the public ease of the people's minds. To contribute some- 
thing to that ease, and bring those whose place it is to consider 
of ways to make the people easy in this case, this work is made 
public. 

"Is there any real danger of the Protestant succession? Is there 
any danger that the Pretender shall be brought in upon us ? Is 
there any danger of Popery and tyranny by restoring the son, as 
they call him, of abdicated King James? It is well known that 
there are some people among us, who are so far from allowing that 
there is any such danger as the said question mentions, that they 
will have it to be a token of disaffection to the government to put 

26* 



404 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

the question ; and are for loading whoever shall offer to start such 
a question, with characters and party marks odious to good men ; 
such as incendiary, promoter of discontent, raiser of faction, divider 
of the people, and the like : names which the writer of these sheets, 
at the same time, both contemns and abhors. He cannot see that 
he is any enemy to the Queen in inquiring, as diligently as possible, 
whether there are any attempts to depose her, or dangerous pros- 
pects of bringing in the hated rival of her glory and dominion. It 
is so far from that, that it is apparently the duty of every true sub- 
ject of her Majesty to inquire seriously, whether the public peace, 
the Queen's safety, her throne, or her person is in any danger from 
the wicked design of her and her people's enemies. Wherefore, 
and for the joint concern every Protestant Briton has in this thing, 
I shall make no difficulty, plainly and seriously to state, and to 
answer this previous question, viz., whether there is any danger of 
the Protestant succession from the present measures, and from the 
present people concerned? I am not ignorant of what has been 
said by some, to prove that the present ministry cannot be sus- 
pected of having any view to the Pretender in any of their measures. 
The best reason which I have seen given upon that subject is, that 
it is not their interest j and that, as we have not found them fools 
that are blind to their own interest, so neither have we found them 
to be such fools as not to understand or pursue it. This we find 
handled sundry ways, by sundry authors, and very much insisted 
upon as a foundation for us to build upon. We shall give our 
thoughts upon it with plainness, and without fear or favour. 

" Good manners requires we should speak of the ministry with 
all due regard to their character and persons. This is a tract de- 
signed to inquire seriously of a weighty and essential, not a trifling 
thing which requires but a trifling examination; nor shall it be 
handled here with satire and scurrility. We approve neither of the 
flatteries of one side, nor the insultings of the other. We shall 
readily and most willingly join with those who are of opinion, that 
it is not the interest of the ministry to be for the Pretender ; and 
that the ministry are not blind to or careless of their own interest ; 
and, consequently, that the ministry cannot be for the Pretender. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 405 

This I hope may be called a direct answer. When I say cannot, I 
must not be understood potentially, that they have no moral capa- 
city ; but they cannot, without such inconsistencies, contradictions, 
and improbable things happening in, which render it highly irra- 
tional so much as to suppose it of them.' It is far from any reflec- 
tion upon the ministry to say, that however they may act upon a 
right, sincere principle for the Protestant succession in all they do, 
which above we profess to believe ; yet that many of the tools they 
make use of, are of another make, and have no edge to cut any 
other way ; no thoughts to move them towards any other end ; no 
other centre which they can have any tendency to ; that the Pre- 
tender's interest is the magnet which draws them by its secret 
influence to point to him as their pole ; that they have their aim at 
his establishment here, and own it to be their aim ; and so they are 
not shy to profess it among themselves ; so their conduct in many 
things makes it sufficiently public. But let the ministry employ 
these men by what necessity or upon what occasion they will, 
though it may not follow that the ministry are therefore for the 
Pretender ; yet it does not also follow that there is no danger of the 
Protestant succession from the employing those sort of people : For 
what if the Queen should die ? 

" I believe that there are very few who alarm themselves much 
with the fears of the Pretender, from the apprehension of his own 
strength from abroad, or from his own party and friends at home 
here; were they once sure that he should receive no assistance from 
the King of France. If, then, the King of France cannot be 
reasonably supposed either to be inclined or be in a condition to 
appear for him, or act in his behalf during the life of the Queen ; 
neither can the Pretender, say some, unless he is resolved to ruin 
all his friends, and at last to ruin himself, make any attempt of that 
kind during her Majesty's life. But what if the Queen should die ? 

"By this Revolution of 1688 it is that her Majesty is made our 
Queen ; the entail of the crown being reserved in the remainder to 
her Majesty in the Act of Settlement made at the filling up the 
vacant throne; and by all those subsequent acts which her Majesty's 
title was confirmed by, during the life of the late king. This Revo- 



406 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

lution of 1688 is that upon which the liberties and religion of this 
nation were rebuilt after the conflagration that was made of them 
in the calamitous times of King Charles II. and King James II., 
and from hence to the love of liberty, which is found almost to be 
naturally placed in the hearts of true Britons ; and upon the view 
whereof they have acted all along in the late war, and in all their 
transactions at home, has obtained the title of a revolution prin- 
ciple. Noting this, then, as above, that her Majesty is our Queen 
by virtue of the Revolution, that establishment alone must be the 
foundation of all her administration : this must effectually secure 
us against any apprehension that the persons acting under her 
Majesty can act in behalf of the Pretender during her Majesty's 
life; for that they must immediately overthrow the throne, turn 
the Queen out of it, and renounce the Revolution, upon which her 
Majesty's possession is established. As the Revolution, therefore, 
is the base upon which the throne of her Majesty's possession is 
established; so her Majesty and all that act under her are obliged 
to act upon the foot of the said Revolution, even will they, nil they; 
or else they sink immediately out of rightful power to act at all ; 
her Majesty's title would fall to the ground, their own commissions 
would from that hour be void ; they must declare their royal mis- 
tress and benefactress a subject to the Pretender, and all her pre- 
tences of rightful possession injurious and an usurpation. These 
things being so plain, that he that runs may read them, seem to 
stop all our mouths, from so much as any suggestion that anybody 
can attempt to bring in the Pretender upon us during the life of 
her present Majesty. But what if the Queen should die ? " 

In this style the book proceeds for twenty pages further; en- 
deavouring to persuade the people to be on their guard against any 
sudden surprise on the part of the adherents of the Pretender, in 
case the Queen should die ? 

We will now take the second pamphlet alluded to above, "Reasons 
against the Succession of the House of Hanover." This pamphlet, 
like the former, was written to alarm, excite, or ridicule the con- 
tentions of parties at the time (1713) : a time more contentious, 
and, thanks to Bolingbroke, Swift, Mrs. Masham, and Mister Pope, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 407 

more threatening than any times before known in British history ; 
for, as De Foe well observes in his opening section — 

" What strife is here among you all ! and what a noise about 
who shall be King ; the Lord knows when. Is it not a strange thing, 
we cannot be quiet with the Queen we have, but we must all fall 
into confusion and combustions about who shall come after ? Why, 
pray, folks, how old is the Queen, and when is she to die, that here 
is this pother about it ? I have heard wise people say the Queen is 
not fifty years old, that she has no distemper, but the gout, that 
is a long-life disease, which generally holds out people twenty or 
thirty or forty years ; and let it be how it will, the Queen may well 
linger out twenty or thirty years, and not be a huge old wife 
neither. 

" ' How ! what ! ' say the people ; ' must we think of living twenty 
or thirty years in this wrangling condition we are now in?' This 
would be a torment worse than some of the Egyptian plagues, and 
would be intolerable to bear, though for fewer years than that. 
The animosities of this nation, should they go on as it seems they 
go on now, would by time be come to such a height that all 
charity, society, and mutual agreement among us, will be destroyed. 
Christians, shall we be called ? No ; nothing of the people called 
Christians will be to be found among us. Nothing of Christianity, 
or the substance of Christianity, viz., charity, will be found among 
us. The name Christian may be assumed ; but it will be all hypo- 
crisy and delusion ; the being of Christianity must be lost in the 
fog and smoke and stink and noise and rage and cruelty of our 
quarrel about a King. Is this rational ? Is it agreeable to the true 
interest of the nation ? What must become of trade, of religion, of 
society, of relatives, of families, of people ? Why, harkye, you folk 
that call yourselves rational, and talk of having souls, is this a token 
of your having such things about you, or of thinking rationally? If 
you have, pray what is it likely will become of you all ? Why, the 
strife is gotten into your kitchens, your parlours, your counting- 
houses, nay, into your very beds. You give the folks up; you 
please to listen to your cookmaids and footmen in your kitchens ; 
you shall hear them scolding and swearing and scratching and 



408 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

fighting among themselves j and when you think the noise is about 
the beef and the pudding, the dish-water or the kitchen -stuff, alas ! 
you are mistaken ; the feud is about the more mighty affairs of the 
government; and who is for the Protestant succession, and who for 
the Pretender. The poor despicable scullions learn to cry ' High 
Church ; no Dutch Kings; no Hanover V that they may do it dex- 
terously when they come into the next mob. Here their antagonists 
of the dripping-pan practise the other side, clamour ' No French 
peace, no Pretender, no Popery ! ' The thing is the very same up 
one pair of stairs ; in the shops and warehouses, up the 'prentices 
stand, some on one side of the shop, and some on the other (having 
trade little enough), and these then throw High Church and Low 
Church at one another's heads, like battledore and shuttlecock ; 
instead of posting their books, they are fighting and railing at the 
Pretender and the house of Hanover ; it were better for us, certainly, 
that these things had never been heard of. If we go from the shop, 
one story higher, into our family, the ladies, instead of their innocent 
sports and diversions, they are all falling out one among another; 
the daughters and the mother, the mother and the daughters, the 
children and the servants, nay, the very little sisters, one among 
another. If the chamber-maid is a slattern, and does not please, 
hang her, she is a jade; or I warrant she is a high-flyer; or, on the 
other side, I warrant she *s a Whig ; I never knew one of that sort 
good for anything in my life, Nay, go up to your very bedchambers, 
and even in bed the man and wife shall quarrel about it. People ! 
— people ! What will become of you at this rate ? n 

This being the state of the nation since 1709, when Jonathan 
Swift entered the service of the ministry as a lampooner or slanderer, 
down to this time (1713), whenDeEoe wrote this pamphlet, and asked, 
as well he might, what difference could it make to such a people, so 
corrupt, so dishonest, so contentious, as they were, whether the 
Pretender came or he did not ; for if he did come, he would be good 
enough for them ; for, when Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed Queen 
of England, Mary, afterwards Bloody Mary, was the Pretender in 
the Roman Catholic faith ; and yet the people, Protestant as they 
were, were too much attached to their hereditary prejudices to 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 409 

defend^ their Protestant principles, and the consequences were dis- 
astrous, as we all know. 

" In his own strength, Hanover does not pretend to come ; and if 
he did, he must miscarry. If not in his own, in whose, then, but 
the people of Britain ? And if the people be a weakened, divided, 
and deluded people, and see not your own safety to lie in your 
agreement among yourselves, how shall such weak folk shift him, 
especially against a strong enemy ? So that it will be your destruc- 
tion to attempt to bring in the house of Hanover, unless you can 
stand by and defend him when he is come. This will make you 
all like Monmouth's men in the west ; and you will find yourselves 
lifted up to halters and gibbets, not to places and preferments. 
Unless you reconcile yourselves to one another, and bring things to 
some better pass among the common people, it will be but to banter 
yourselves to talk of the Protestant succession ; for you neither will 
be in a condition to bring over your Protestant successor, or to 
support him on the throne when you have brought him ; and it will 
not be denied, that to make the attempt, and not succeed in it, is to 
ruin yourselves ; and this, I think, is very good reason against the 
succession of the house of Hanover." 

I feel these quotations to be long and tiresome, and, to the 
ordinary reader, uninteresting ; yet I feel compelled to make them ; 
for on these quotations De Foe was committed to Newgate on a 
charge of high treason; and as his former commitment in 1703, 
for writing the Shortest Way with the Dissenters, must receive an 
explanation and exculpation, from the style of argument now used 
in this pamphlet of 1713, I am compelled to dwell on this subject. 
It is very singular that 1703 and 1713 should have been selected 
by De Foe for writing as he did, on each occasion; when those 
occasions were the very times when Harley was requiring some one 
to write on the very subjects, and at the very times, on which De 
Foe did write. Yes ! in 1703, to turn out the Earl of Nottingham; 
and in 1713, to make a diversion for the public mind from the fixed 
railing disappointment on the disastrous treaty of peace signed at 
Utrecht ; to the sacrifice of the Dutch, the Germans, the Protestants 
of Europe, to the Roman Catholics of Spain and France; the patrons 



410 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

of Bolingbroke and Swift ! I do not, for one moment, believe 
Daniel De Foe to have been a High-Church Tory in 1703; neither 
do I believe that he was indifferent to the claims of the Elector of 
Hanover in 1713; but yet I believe it to be very possible for him 
to have written a political pamphlet, to serve a purpose, when he 
could do this without an abandonment of principle; for when he 
called upon the High Church to crush the dissenters, by hanging 
them all, he abandoned no principle. He affirmed, and affirmed 
truly too, that if Mr. Howe's church members would so far play at 
bopeep with God Almighty, by receiving the sacrament once in each 
year, in order to qualify for the lord-may orship of London, they 
would receive forty sacraments in the same establishment within 
the same time, to save themselves from being hanged. Well, then ! 
in the two pamphlets I am writing upon, there is no abandonment 
of principle, as the following close-reasoning quotation will fully 
testify ; and mind, this close reasoning is as applicable to the pam- 
phlet of 1703 — for which he was placed in the pillory three times, 
and twelve months in Newgate — as to the pamphlets for which he 
was now a prisoner in Newgate, on a charge of high treason. 

But, then, stop ! — There was the Occasional Conformity of Dis- 
senters Bill. Was De Foe honest and consistent there ? We will 
see ; for his conduct on the Occasional Conformity Bill is as appli- 
cable to the quotations I am about to give, as the pamphlets which 
they are intended to defend, and the pamphlet in which they are 
contained. De Foe either was honest as a man, and consistent as a 
politician, or he was not — one or the other. What was his conduct 
on the Occasional Conformity Bill of 1702, the first year of the 
reign of that weak woman, Queen Anne, who ascended the throne 
by means of the solemn compact entered into between King and 
People at the glorious Revolution of 1688 — a revolution carried for 
the most part by the dissenters, for the furtherance of the vitality 
of Protestantism within these realms ; and yet, in the face of this 
solemn compact, Queen Anne sanctions a bill in Parliament for the 
depriving of these very dissenters of all their civil privileges as 
citizens. But what was De Foe's conduct on the occasion ? Why, 
he published at the time a pamphlet entitled " An Enquiry into 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 411 

Occasional Conformity, showing that the Dissenters are no ways 
concerned in it. London, 1702/' which he opens with the following 
paragraph : — 

" He that opposes his own judgment against the current of the 
times, ought to be backed with unanswerable truths ; and he that 
has truth on his side, is a fool, as well as a coward, if he is afraid 
to own it; because of the currency or multitude of other men's 
opinions." He stood against all the long-spoon-and-custard dis- 
senters — he stood alone, and added, " Who can help it?" He was 
for the bill as a refiner of the principle ; for " those among us who 
conform to your church for a place or a salary, you are welcome to 
take among you ; and let them be a part of yourselves. All the 
converts you can make by the mammon of unrighteousness are 
your own." 

The dissenters had rights, and De Foe claimed those rights in the 
whole, as rights ; and not in part, as a compromise, a concession, a 
toleration granted by a superior power to an inferior, as an act of 
grace or condescension. He stated the numbers of the dissenters 
to be two millions ; and he knew that, by a rigorous persecution of 
equality or vitality, those two millions would speedily become four 
millions or more ; and then where are your Leslies, your Swifts, 
your Popes, your Sacheverells, and your Ned Wards and Tom 
Brownes ; the paid slang- writers, and perhaps actors too, of Harley 
and St. John ; for the writing down — yes ! the acting down a prin- 
ciple? De Foe knew the object of this Occasional Bill to be 
oppressive ; but yet he scorned a compromise with the oppressors ; 
his language and his feeling were, " We are two millions ; do your 
worst ; and if you will oppress, do it ; and do it heartily ; and we 
must suffer, so long as you have the power to make us suffer ; but 
no longer — but no longer — no longer ! Force us once upon the 
magazine of Original Power, and another question may be put, as 
it has been put before, and the last time in 1688 ; when William III. 
of glorious memory took possession of St. James's Palace at the 
head of fourteen thousand Dutchmen; and accompanied by the 
blessings of the united vitality of the Protestantism of Europe." 

Hear what De Foe says on this business, and judge of his con- 



412 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

sistency and honesty as a politician and as a man; for I maintain 
him to have been honest and consistent in his political course of 
action. He saw the tyranny of the Occasional Conformity Bill ; he 
saw its injustice ; and he felt ; but he scorned to ask for rights as a 
favour. He ask a favour when he knew — we are two millions ! 
No ! persecute — light up your fires — store up your faggots — force 
the vitality of Protestantism by persecution — yes ! force us into the 
magazine of Original Power, and take the consequences of your 
folly and rashness; but remember 1688, and the foundation-stone 
of the British constitution, which is — what ? The Sovereignty of the 
People. Queen Anne was a fool, and the daughter of a fool ; for 
she was daughter of James II. j and, had it not been for the fore- 
thought of William III., she would have been an outcast, as well as 
a fool. She was on the throne of Great Britain in 1702. 

But to return to De Foe's consistency and honesty, which I am 
now asserting. 

" No, gentlemen," says he, " we don't tell you we like that part 
of the bill which excludes us from the native honours and prefer- 
ments of our country, which are our due, our birthright, equally 
with our neighbours, and to which we should be called by the 
suffrage of the people; and we cannot but think it a hardship 
beyond the power of reason to justify. But, since this right must 
be clogged with so many inconveniences, that we must mortgage 
our consciences to enjoy them, no man can have any charity left for 
us, but must presently conclude we shall freely forego such trifles 
for our consciences, or else that we may have no consciences at all." 
And he also adds — " Is it not very hard that the dissenter should 
be excluded from all places of profit, trust, and honour, and, at the 
same time, shall not be excused from those which are attended with 
charge, trouble, and loss of time? That a dissenter shall be pressed 
as a sailor to fight at sea, listed as a soldier to fight on shore, and, 
let his merit be never so much above his fellows, shall never be 
capable of preferment, so much as to carry a halbert ? That we 
must maintain our own clergy and your clergy ; our own poor and 
your poor ; pay equal taxes and equal duties ; and not to be thought 
worthy to be trusted to set a drunkard in the stocks?" 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 413 

Well, having brought the Occasional Bill from 1702 into the 
same page with De Foe's pamphlets of 1703, and those two of 
1713 ; to place as much of the man before us as possible, for one 
view ; we will now give the quotation so long promised — one which 
I believe to contain the mainspring of all De Foe's political actions 
of the whole course of his political life. De Foe has long been 
blamed for his apparent want of consistency ; we have the motive 
of action in his own language, which 1 now give; when writing 
on the Protestant succession of the house of Hanover, or the 
Pretender : — 

" Learned men say, some diseases in Nature are cured by anti- 
pathies, and some by sympathies; that the enemies of Nature are 
the best preservatives of Nature ; that bodies are brought down by 
the skill of the physician, that they may the better be brought up ; 
made sick to be made well ; and carried to the brink of the grave 
in order to be kept from the grave. For these reasons, and in order 
to these things, poisons are administered in physic, and amputations 
in surgery ; the flesh is cut that it may heal ; an arm laid open that 
it may close with safety ; and those methods of cure are said to be 
the most certain, as well as most necessary in those particular cases; 
from whence it is become a proverbial saying in physic, ' Desperate 
diseases must have desperate remedies/ Now, it is very proper to 
inquire in this case, whether the nation is not in such a state of 
health at this time, that the coming of the Pretender may not be of 
absolute necessity, by way of cure of such national distempers as 
now afflict us, and that an effectual cure can be wrought no other 
way ? If upon due inquiry it should appear that we are not fit to 
receive such a Prince as the successor of the house of Hanover is, 
that we should maltreat and abuse him if he were here ; and that 
there is no way for us to learn the true value of a Protestant suc- 
cessor so well as by tasting a little what a Popish Pretender is, and 
feeling something of the great advantages that may accrue to us by 
the superiority of a Jacobite party ; if the disease of stupidity has 
so far seized us, that we are to be cured only by poisons and fer- 
mentations ; if the wound is mortified, and nothing but deep inci- 
sions, amputations, and desperate remedies, must be used ; if it 



414 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

would be necessary thus to teach us the worth of things by the 
want of them j and there is no other way to bring the nation to its 
senses; why, what can be then said against the Pretender? Even 
let him come, that we may see what slavery means; and may 
inquire how the chains of French gallies hang about us, and how 
wooden shoes are to walk in ; for no experience teaches us so well 
as that we buy dearest and pay for with the most smart. 

" I think this may pass for a very good reason against the Pro- 
testant succession. Nothing is surer than that the management 
of King Charles II. and his late brother, were the best ways the 
nation could ever have taken to bring to pass the happy Revolu- 
tion ; yet these afflictions to the nation were not joyous but grievous 
for the time they remained ; and the poor kingdom suffered great 
convulsions ; but what weighs that, if these convulsions are found 
to be necessary to a cure ? If the physicians prescribe a vomit for 
the cure of any particular distemper, will the patient complain of 
being made sick? No, no. When you begin to be sick, then we 
say, ' Oh, that is right ! ' and then the vomit begins to work. And 
how shall the island of Britain spew out all the dregs and filth the 
public digesture has contracted, if it be not made sick with some 
French physic ? If you give good nourishing food to a foul stomach, 
you cause that wholesome food to turn into filth, and, instead of 
nourishing the man, it nourishes diseases in the man, till those 
diseases prove his destruction, and bring him to the grave. In like 
manner, if you will bring the Protestant successor into the govern- 
ment before that government have taken some physic to cleanse it 
from the ill digesture it may have been under, how do we know but 
the diseases which are already begun in the constitution may not be 
nourished and kept up till they may hereafter break out in the days 
of our posterity, and prove mortal to the nation ? Wherefore should 
we desire the Protestant successor to come in upon a foot of high- 
flying menage, and be beholden for their establishment to those who 
are the enemies of the constitution ? Would not this be to have in 
time to come, the successors of that house be the same thing as the 
ages past have already been made sick of, and made to spew out of 
the government ? Are not any of these considerations enough to 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 415 

make any of us averse to the Protestant succession? No, no ; let us 
take a French vomit first, and make us sick ; that we may be well 
and may afterwards more effectually have our health established. 

" The Pretender will no doubt bring us good medicines, and cure 
us of all our hypochondriac vapours that now make us so giddy. 
But, say some, he will bring Popery in upon us. Popery, say you ? 
Alas ! it is too true : Popery is a sad thing ; and that, say some 
folks, ought to have been thought on before now ; but suppose, 
then, this thing called Popery : how will it come in ? Why, say the 
honest folk, the Pretender is a Papist ; and if a Popish Prince come 
upon the throne, we shall have Popery come in upon us without 
fail. Well, well; and what hurt will this be to you? May not 
Popery be very good in its kind ? What if this Popery, like the 
vomit made to poison, be the only physic that can cure you ? If 
this vomit make you spew out your filth, your Tory filth, your 
idolatrous filth, your tyrannic filth, and restore you to your health ; 
shall it not be good for you ? Here, pray, observe the allegory 
of physic. You heard before, when you take a vomit, the physic 
given you to vomit is always something contrary to nature — some- 
thing that, if taken in quantity, would destroy ; but how does it 
operate ? It attacks Nature, and puts her upon a ferment to cast 
out what offends her. But, remark it, I pray : when the patient 
vomits, he always vomits up the physic and the filth together. So, 
if the nation should take a vomit of Popery, as when the Pretender 
comes most certain it is that this will be the consequence, they will 
vomit up the physic and the filth together : the Popery and the 
Pretender will all come up again, and all the Popish, arbitrary, 
tyrannical filth, which has offended the stomach of the nation so 
long, and ruined its digesture, will all come up together. One 
vomit of Popery will do us all a great deal of good ; for the stomach 
of the constitution is marvellously foul. Observe, people, — this is 
no new application : the nation has taken a vomit of this kind be- 
fore now, as in Queen Mary I/s time; the Reformation was not 
well chewed, and, being taken down whole, did not rightly digest, 
but left too much crudity in the stomach ; from whence proceeded 
ill nourishment, bad blood, and a very ill habit of body in the con- 



416 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

stitution. Witness the distemper which seized the Gospellers in 
Suffolk, who, being struck with an epilepsy or dead palsy, in the 
better half of their understanding — to wit, the religious and zealous 
part — took up arms for a Popish Pretender against the Protestant 
successor, upon the wild-headed whimsy of the right line being 
jure divino. Well, what followed, I pray ? Why, they took a vomit 
of Popery. The potion, indeed, was given in a double vehicle, 
namely, of faggots a little inflamed; and this worked so effec- 
tually, that the nation, having vomited, brought up all the filth of 
the stomach, and the foolish notion of hereditary right; spewed out 
Popery also along with it. Thus were Popery and fire and faggot 
the most effectual remedy to cure the nation of all its simple 
diseases, and to settle and establish the Protestant Reformation; 
and why, then, should we be so terrified with the apprehensions of 
Popery ? Nay, why should we not open our eyes and see how much 
to our advantage it may be in the next reign, to have Popery 
brought in, and to that end the Pretender set up, that he may help 
us to this most useful dose of physic ? These are some other of my 
reasons against the Protestant succession. I think they cannot be 
mended. It may perhaps be thought hard that we should thus 
seem to make light of so terrible a thing as Popery, and should jest 
with the affair of the Protestants. No, people ! This is no jest ; 
taking physic is no jest at all; for it is useful many ways, and 
there is no keeping the body in health without it ; and the corrup- 
tions of politic constitutions are as gross and as fatal as those of 
human bodies, and require as immediate application of medicines. 
And why should you, people of this country, be so alarmed, and 
seem so afraid of this thing called Popery, when it is spoken of in 
intelligible terms, since you are not afraid alternately to put your 
hands to those things which as naturally tend in themselves to bring 
it upon you, as clouds tend to rain, or smoke to fire ? What do all 
your scandalous divisions, your unchristian quarrellings, your heap- 
ing up reproaches, and loading each other with infamy and with 
abominable forgeries — what do these tend to but Popery ? If it 
should be asked, how have these any such reference ? the answer is 
most natural from the premises. If divisions weaken the nation ; 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 417 

if Whig and Tory, even united, are and have been weak enough not 
to keep out Popery, surely, then, widening the unhappy breaches, 
and inflaming things between them to implacable and irreconcilable 
breaches, must tend to overthrow the Protestant kingdom, which, 
as our ever-blessed Saviour said, when divided against itself, cannot 
stand. Besides, are not your breaches come up to that height 
already as to let any impartial bystander see that Popery must be 
the consequence ? Do not one party say openly, they had rather be 
Papists than Presbyterians; that they would rather go to mass 
than to a meeting-house ; and are they not to that purpose, all of 
them who are of that height, openly joined with the Jacobites in 
the cause of Popery ? On the other hand, are not the Presbyterians 
in Scotland so exasperated at having the abjuration oath imposed 
upon them, contrary, as they tell us, to their principles, that 
they care not if he or any one else would come now, and free 
them from that yoke ? What is all this but telling us plainly, that 
the whole nation is running into Popery and the Pretender ? Why, 
then, while you are obliquely and by consequences joining your 
hands to bring in Popery — why, oh, distracted folk ! should you 
think it amiss to have me talk of doing it openly and avowedly ? 
Better is open enmity than secret guile ; better is it to talk openly 
for Popery, that you may see the shape and real picture of it, than 
pretend strong opposition to it, and be all at the same time putting 
your hands to the work, and pulling it down upon yourselves with 
all your might. 

"But here comes an objection in our way, which, however weighty, 
we must endeavour to get over : and that is, what becomes of the 
abjuration? If the Pretender come in, we are all perjured, and we 
ought to be all unanimous for the house of Hanover, because we are 
all perjured if we are for the Pretender. Perjured! say ye; ha! 
why, do not all these people say we are all perjured already — nay, 
one, two, three, or four times? What signify oaths and abjurations 
in a nation where the Parliament can make an oath to-day, and 
punish a man for keeping it to-morrow ? Besides, taking oaths 
without examination, and breaking them without consideration, 
hath been so much a practice, and the date of its original is so far 

27 



418 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

back, that none, or but very few, know where to look for it. Nay, 
have we not been called, in the vulgar dialect of foreign countries, 
the swearing nation ? Note : we do not say the forsworn nation l 
for, whatever other countries say of us, it is not meet we should say 
so of ourselves. But as to swearing and forswearing, associating 
and abjuring, there are very few without sin to throw the first stone ; 
and therefore we may be the less careful to answer in this matter. 
It is evident that the friends of the Pretender cannot blame us ; for 
have not the most professed Jacobites all over the nation taken the 
abjuration? — nay, when even in their hearts they have all the while 
resolved to be for the Pretender ? Not to instance, in the swearing 
in all ages to and against governments, just as they were or were 
not in condition to protect us, or keep them out of possession ; but 
we have a much better way to come off this than that; and we 
doubt not to clear the nation of perjury, by declaring the design, 
true intent, and meaning of the thing itself; for the good or evil of 
every action is said to lie in the intention. If, then, we can prove 
the bringing-in the Pretender to be done with a real intention and 
a sincere design to keep him out, or, as before, to spew him out ; 
if we bring in Popery with an intention and a sincere design to 
establish the Protestant religion ; if we bring in a Popish Prince, 
with a single design the firmer and better to fix and introduce 
the Protestant Hanover succession ; if, I say, these things are the 
true intent and meaning, and are at the bottom of all our actions 
in this matter, pray, how shall we be said to be perjured, or to 
break in upon the abjuration, whose meaning we keep, whatever 
becomes of the literal part of it ? Thus we are abundantly defended 
from the guilt of perjury, because we preserve the design and in- 
tention upright and entire for the house of Hanover; though, as 
the best means to bring it to pass, we think fit to bring in Popery 
and the Pretender. But, yet further to justify the lawfulness and 
usefulness of such kind of methods, we may go back to former 
experiments of the same case, or like cases ; for nothing can illus- 
trate such a thing so aptly as the example of eminent men, who 
have practised the very same things in the same or like cases ; and 
more especially when that practice has been made use of by honest 



LTFE OF DE FOE. 419 

men in an honest cause, and the end been crowned with success. 
This eminent example was first put in practice by the late Earl of 
Sunderland, in the time of King James the Second, and that, too, 
in the case of bringing Popery intjo England, which is the very indi- 
vidual article before us. This famous politician, if fame lies not, 
turned Papist himself, went publicly to mass, advised and directed 
all the forward rash steps that King James afterwards took towards 
the introducing of Popery into the nation. If he is not slandered, 
it was he advised the setting-up Popish chapels and mass-houses in 
the city of London, and in the several principal towns of this nation; 
the invading the right of corporations, courts of justice, universities, 
and at last the erecting the High Commission Court of Justice, to 
sap the foundations of the church ; and many more of the arbitrary 
steps which that monarch took for the ruin of the Protestant reli- 
gion, as he thought, were brought about by this politic earl purely 
with design, and as the only effectual means, to ruin the Popish 
schemes, and bring about the establishment of the Protestant reli- 
gion by the Revolution ; and, as experience after made it good, he 
alone was in the right, and it was the only way left, the only step 
that could be taken ; though at first it made us all of the opinion 
the man was going the ready way to ruin the country, and that he 
was selling us to Popery and Rome. This was exactly our case ; 
the nation being sick of a deadly and otherwise incurable disease, 
this wise physician knew that nothing but a medicine made up of 
deadly poison, that should put the whole body into convulsions, and 
make it cast up the dregs of the malady, would have any effect ; and 
so he applied himself accordingly to such a cure. He brought on 
Popery to the very door; he caused the nation to swallow as much 
of it as he thought was enough to make her as sick as a horse, and 
then he foresaw she would spew up the disease and the medicine 
together ; the poison of Popery he saw would come up with it, and 
so it did, If this be our case now, then it may be true, that bringing 
in the Pretender is the only way to establish the Protestant succes- 
sion ; and upon such terms, and such only, I declare myself for the 
Pretender." 

There is nothing unconstitutional in these books, for they merely 

27* 



420 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

state that the title of her Majesty to the throne was by the compact 
entered into between William III. and the people, at the Revolution 
of 1688; and that the people should be on their guard against any 
sudden surprise on the part of any enemies of that Revolution en- 
deavouring to cheat the people out of the benefits resulting from 
that solemn compact. To us, unacquainted with all the intricacies of 
the party malevolence of the reign of Queen Anne, it would be inex- 
plicable to conceive how any Whig of that day, and friend of the 
glorious Revolution, could commence legal proceedings against 
Daniel De Foe for writing such salutary advice as that contained in 
this one pamphlet. The real point of attack was the Mercator ; for 
the free-trade principles of that paper threatened the monopoly of 
rent, and the exclusive interests of landlordism. In this hour of 
difficulty, De Foe stole away to Halifax, in Yorkshire, where he 
took up his quarters for some time, at the Rose and Crown, in the 
Back Lane; where he was known to Dr. Nettleton, an eminent 
physician and moralist ; and also to the Rev. Nathaniel Priestley, 
of Ovenden, who had the charge of the then Trinitarian Presby- 
terian congregation assembling at the Northgate Chapel, Halifax, 
and also another congregation at Horton, near Bradford : a man 
esteemed and beloved by his people, as the fact of their declining to 
part with him, when Ralph Thoresby, the Leeds historian, rode 
over to Ovenden, to request him to take charge of the congregation 
assembling at Mill Hill Chapel, in Leeds, on some occasion of a 
vacancy occurring at that place of worship. It is highly probable 
that De Foe would not have much of the company of the Rev. 
Thomas Burton, the vicar ; who was of Harley's appointment, and 
was distinguished beyond all other English vicars, for sermons 
degraded by fulsome adulation of royalty and passive obedience of 
subjects. Dr. Nettleton would be connected with the North Gate 
Chapel, where De Foe would commence his acquaintance with him, 
as well as with the minister ; for this full-blown balloon, Thomas 
Burton, would have nothing in common with Dr. Nettleton. 

Poor De Foe's publisher and printer being arrested, and sworn 
to the writer ; he had, after some delay, to surrender himself to a 
judge's warrant, and was committed to Newgate till sufficient bail 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 421 

could be put iu for his appearance at the King's Bench bar for trial. 
Suffice to say that his old friend the Lord Treasurer Harley came 
forward to the rescue, with a government .prosecution, and finally a 
free pardon from the Queen. This act of Harley was noble and 
generous; for he knew that De Foe had really written for the 
Hanoverian succession and against the interest of the Pretender; 
though I could have been well pleased if De Foe had not trenched 
upon the subject of the Pretender at this time, for reasons I have 
given elsewhere; and so long as Harley had Leslie, Swift, Pope, 
Gay, Prior, Atterbury, Kidpath, Arbuthnot, Smalridge, and a score 
more aspirants for the Lord Treasurer's smiles and assistance, he 
wanted not for talents and obsequiousness in pamphleteers, that he 
should be driven to enlist poor De Foe, who had done some service 
to the Utrecht settlement, by his free-trade opinions published in 
the paper Mercator ; for which he was now made to feel the whole 
weight of Whig vengeance. His pardon was granted by Harley: — 

"Given at our Castle of Windsor, the twentieth day of Novem- 
ber, 1713, in the eleventh year of our reign. By her Majesty's 
command, " Bolingbroke." 

Such was the termination of this mean, cowardly affair ; perse- 
cuted for his free-trade principles, and threatened with a trial for 
high treason by the Whigs ; and rescued by Robert Harley, the 
Queen's prime minister, as an act of charity ; though De Foe was 
consistently arranged against Jonathan Swift and the whole hire- 
ling scribes of the day ; the paid writers of the ministry, the High 
' Church, and the Pretender's patron the King of France. 

De Foe, in his Appeal to Honour and Justice, thus expresses him- 
self on this disgraceful, cowardly prosecution : — 

" Let any indifferent man judge whether I was not treated with 
particular malice in this matter; being, notwithstanding this, re- 
proached in the daily public prints with having written treasonable 
books in behalf of the Pretender; nay, in some of those books, 
the Queen herself was reproached with having granted her pardon 
to an author who wrote for the Pretender. I think I might with 
much more justice say, I was the first man that ever was obliged to 



422 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

seek a pardon for writing for the Hanover succession ; and the first 
man these people ever sought to ruin for writing against the Pre- 
tender. For if ever a book was sincerely designed to further and 
propagate the affection and zeal of the nation against the Pretender 
— nay, and was made use of, and that with success too, for that 
purpose — these books were so ; and I ask no more favour of the 
world to determine the opinion of honest men for or against me, 
than what is drawn constructively from these books. Let one word 
written or spoken by me, either published or not published, be pro- 
duced, that was in the least disrespectful to the Protestant succes- 
sion, or to any branch of the house of Hanover, or that can be 
judged to be favourable to the interest or person of the Pretender ; 
and I will be willing to waive her Majesty's pardon, and render my- 
self to public justice, to be punished for it, as I shall well deserve. 

" I freely and openly challenge the worst of my enemies to 
charge me with any discourse, conversation, or behaviour, in my 
whole life, unbecoming or disrespectful to any of the royal family of 
Hanover, or the least favourable to the person or designs of the 
Pretender. Nay, further : I defy them to prove that I ever kept 
company, or had any society, friendship, or conversation with any 
Jacobite. So averse have I been to the interest, and the people, 
that I have studiously avoided their company on all occasions. 

" Nothing can be a greater misfortune to me than to be accused 
and publicly reproached with what is, of all things in the world, 
most abhorred by me; and that which has made it the more afflicting 
is, that this charge arises from those very things which I did with 
the sincerest design to manifest the contrary. But such is my 
present fate, and I am to submit to it ; which I do with meekness 
and calmness, as to a judgment from Heaven ; and am practising 
that duty which I have studied long ago, of forgetting my enemies, 
and praying for them that despitefully use me." 

At this time the state of the country was most unsatisfactory and 
unsafe, from the character of the ministry ; at the head of which 
stood Robert Harley, supported by St. John in office ; and Jonathan 
Swift, and half the scamp-writers in London, out of office. Pam- 
phlets and lampoons were showered upon the public as thick as 



LIFE OF DE FOE. _ 423 

hail, and a deadly, bloody revolutionary contest between the Pre- 
tender and the Elector of Hanover appeared to be inevitable. 
England never was at such a pass for unscrupulous writing as at 
the present time — never in such a foreboding for evil, and a scene 
of terror and anarchy ; and all this brought about by a dishonest, 
unscrupulous ministry, supported by Swift and Pope \ by which 
ministry it was brought about " in the third and last session of this 
pacific and corrupt Parliament," that as the time for limiting 
Dr. SachevereH's silence being expired on the 23rd of March, the 
Commons, to show their dislike of his prosecution, and as a token 
of their great sense of his merits and sufferings, who was, next 
"under God and her Majesty, the happy instrument of delivering 
these nations from the slavery of a late tyrannical faction," it was 
ordered that he should be desired to preach before the House of 
Commons, at St. Margaret's, Westminster, on the 29th following 
(being the day which the nation commemorated the Restoration of 
the royal family), which the Doctor readily complied with. This 
would be the 29th of May, 1713. 

All the sons of faction were delighted with this display, and 
voted the thanks of the House for the discourse ! And the court, 
not to be outdone by the obsequious House of Commons, rewarded 
the Doctor with the rectorship of St. Andrew's, Holborn, a rich 
living in the gift of the crown. About this time, too, Jonathan 
Swift, " who had served the present managers in another capacity, 
viz., by writing several libels against the Whigs and last ministry, 
was, by the Duke of Ormond, promoted to the deanery of St. Patrick, 
Dublin ; and also Dr. Francis Atterbury, another warm stickler for 
the Tory party, was made Bishop of Rochester ; and also Dr. Smal- 
ridge, another, Dean of Christ Church." 

At the very time that the House of Commons were thanking 
Dr. Henry Sacheverell for his Twenty-ninth-of-May Sermon, and 
the Queen was promoting him to a rich rectory ; and promoting 
Jonathan Swift too, and Atterbury and Smalridge, for their Toryism 
and pamphlet-writing ; for these were all of one lot, ready at the 
pen, and unprincipled; one Helkiah Bedford, a nonjuring clergy- 
man, was tried and convicted at the Queen's Bench bar at West- 



424 LIFE OP DE FOE. 

minster, for writing, printing, and publishing a treasonable book, 
entitled the Hereditary Right of the Crown of England asserted, &c, 
for which he was fined and imprisoned ; although the said book was 
some months before advertised in the London Gazette; not without 
some suspicion of the connivance of one of the secretaries of state. 

Here we have another instance of the criminality of calling in 
question the constitutional principle of the sovereignty of the 
people of England within these realms; or the people being the 
source of all legitimate power within the realm. 

During the whole time of Harley's power as prime minister, or 
from 1709 to 1714, every speech from the throne to the Houses of 
Parliament, or response from the Commons, contained a paragraph 
to the following effect : — 

" We are very sensible how much the liberty of the press is 
abused, by turning it into such a licentiousness as is a just reproach 
to the nation ; since not only false and scandalous libels are printed 
and published against your Majesty's government, but the most 
horrid blasphemies against God and religion. And we beg leave 
humbly to assure your Majesty, that we will do our utmost to find 
out a remedy equal to this mischief, and that may effectually cure it." 

At the convocation of the clergy, held at this time (1712), Dr. 
Smalridge, one of the initiated in this pamphleteering -slang war- 
fare, made answer to the above charge : "With faith or conscience, 
Mr. Prolocutor, can we offer to complain of the licentiousness taken 
by lay writers, and yet connive at the like offences given by the 
ministers of our church? I doubt greater offences? For if all 
the ill books against religion, scriptures, laws of the land, and con- 
stitution of this church, were here packed up together, I would 
undertake to pick out the worst of 5 em by pointing out those that 
were written by clergymen ; even of the profanest drollery, as well 
as of the most serious heresy." Yes, friend Smalridge ! — thy 
brother, Jonathan Swift, was a master-hand at this work; and 
thou obtainedst promotion through it, in the Church of England, 
and by the Queen's prime minister ! 

In January, 1713, Colonel Coote, of the Foot Guards, was ordered 
to sell his company to the adjutant of the regiment, Mr. Blackney, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 425 

for £1200, for the rejoicings lie had assisted at, at the Three Tuns 
Tavern, Gracechurch Street, on the late King William's birthday. 
He retired from his regiment applauded and esteemed by all the 
friends of the Revolution, and the Protestant succession of the most 
serene house of Hanover. 

The last Parliament of this uneasy reign assembled for business 
at St. Stephen's Chapel/Westminster, under the Speakership of Sir 
Thomas Hanmer; and commenced, as all sessions of Parliament did 
commence since Harley St. John, Swift, Leslie, and Sacheverell 
undertook the direction of the public mind in November, 1709; 
when Swift was enlisted by the ministry, to support the pens of 
Sacheverell and Leslie, and write up the power of France, and the 
claims of the Pretender to the throne of these realms. 

In consequence of the Queen's indisposition in body, the meeting 
of Parliament had to be put off from the 10th day of December, 
1713, to the 12th day of January, 1714; and again from the 12th 
day of January to the 16th of February; all which occurring at the 
time of the signing of the treaty of peace at Utrecht, caused a panic 
in the city of London, and a run on the Bank of England ; when, 
to calm the public mind, her Majesty wrote, through her Secretary 
of State, Bolingbroke, the following letter to Sir Samuel Stainer, 
Knight, lord mayor of the city of London : — 

" Anne R. 

" Right trusty and well-beloved, an aguish indisposition, suc- 
ceeded by a fit of the gout, has detained us at this place longer 
than we designed ; yet, since it has pleased Almighty God to restore 
us to such a degree of health, that we hope to be able soon to 
return to our usual residence, we continue determined to open our 
Parliament on Tuesday the 16th of this instant February, according 
to the notice given by proclamation. 

"Thus much we have judged proper to communicate to you, and 
by you to the Court of Aldermen, and to our other loving subjects 
of our good city of London, to the intent that you may all, in your 
several stations, contribute to discountenance and put a stop to 
those malicious rumours, spread by evil-disposed persons, to the 



426 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

prejudice of credit, and to the eminent hazard of the public peace 
and tranquillity. And so we bid you farewell. 

" By her Majesty's command, " Bolingbroke." 

On the appointed day, Tuesday, Feb. 16, 1714, the Parliament 
assembled at Westminster for the swearing in of members, &c, and 
then adjourned to the 2nd of March, when the Queen opened the 
session in person j when, as usual in her royal speech, she states, 
among other matters good and bad : — 

" I wish that effectual care had been taken, as I have often 
desired, to suppress those seditious papers, and factious rumours ; 
by which designing men have been able to sink credit, and the 
innocent have suffered. 

"There are some who are arrived at that height of malice as 
to insinuate that the Protestant succession in the house of 
Hanover is in danger under my government. 

" Those who go about thus to distract the minds of men with 
imaginary dangers, can only mean to disturb the present tran- 
quillity, and to bring real mischiefs upon us. 

" After all I have done to secure our religion and your liberties, 
I cannot mention these proceedings without some degree of warmth; 
and I hope you will all agree with me, that attempts to weaken my 
authority, or to render the possession of the crown uneasy to me, 
can never be proper means to strengthen the Protestant succession." 

To this address from the throne the Commons return a dutiful 
answer, containing the following, that " they will, as far as in them 
lies, disappoint the designs of malicious and unreasonable men ; they 
will, on all occasions, show their just abhorrence of the licentious 
practices in publishing scandalous papers, and spreading seditious 
rumours. And, as your Commons will always support and main- 
tain the Protestant succession in the house of Hanover, they can't 
but be astonished at the malicious insinuations of any who would 
suggest that succession to be in danger under your Majesty's most 
auspicious government." 

During the discussions on the address from the throne, the Earl 
of Wharton, out of respect to her Majesty's views on seditious 



LIFE OF DE FOE, 



42- 



papers, complained to the House of a scandalous libel entitled " Tht 
Public Spirit of the Whigs set forth in their Generous Encourage- 
ment of the Author of the Crisis (Sir Richard Steele) ; with some 
Observations on the Seasonableness, Candour, Erudition, and Style 
of that Treatise. Printed for John Morphew, near Stationer s' Hall, 
1714." The Union with Scotland; the Scotch; and in particular 
the Earl of Argyle, who had altogether gone over to the Whig 
party, appeared to come in for that part of the libel complained 
of, " containing very ungentlemanlike expressions concerning the 
poverty of the Scotch nation in general; and comparing that country 
(England) with which it was incorporated, to a person of quality, 
that had been prevailed upon to marry a woman much his inferior, 
and without a groat to her fortune." The author of it likewise had 
the assurance to affirm therein, "that the pensions and employ- 
ments possessed by the natives of that country (Scotland) now 
among us, amount to more than the whole body of their nobility 
spent at home ; and that all the money that was raised there upon 
the public, was hardly sufficient to defray their civil and military 
lists ; and also said, he could point out some with great titles, who 
affected to appear very vigorous for dissolving the Union, though 
their whole revenues before that period would have ill maintained a 
Welsh justice of the peace ; and had since gathered more money 
than ever any Scotchman, who had not travelled, could form an 
idea of." 

This complaint made by the Earl of Wharton being warmly 
espoused by the majority of the House, the Lord High Treasurer 
(Harley) protested he knew nothing of that pamphlet ; exclaimed 
against the malicious insinuations contained in it; and readily 
joined in an order for taking up Mr. John Morphew, the printer, 
and putting him into the custody of the Black Rod. 

On the above, Richard Steele, Esq., observes : — " There were not 
wanting persons in that august assembly who were too well ac- 
quainted with a certain great man's veracity, not to suspect anything 
in him, rather than want of knowledge ; and it was whispered about 
that he that wrote it, had said grace more than once (Swift), and 
fouled many a plate, at a nobleman's table in York Buildings" (the 
Lord High Treasurer's residence). 



428 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

On the investigation proceeding, Barber, the printer, was examined 
by the House; and on his declaration that he had no information to 
give, " None at all, upon my honour," which put the House into 
a violent fit of laughter, from the meanness of the person that 
made the answer, and the air of quality which he gave himself in 
making it. 

The Peers were very diligent in tracing out such footsteps as 
might best lead to the fountain-head from whence these streams of 
scandal and detraction first sprung; and they omitted nothing to 
make the discovery ; yet such were the counter-practices of some 
whose business it was to have the author concealed, that her Majesty 
was prevailed upon to take cognizance of that affair into her own 
hands in one of her courts at Westminster; and on the 6th of 
March, 1714, the Earl of Marr, one of the principal secretaries of 
state, had it in command to acquaint the House, that orders had 
been already given for the prosecution of John Barber; which put a 
stop to all further inquiries about that matter in a parliamentary way. 

Three days after, Barber and Morphew were, upon their humble 
request, enlarged from confinement ; and on the 9th, the same day 
of their enlargement, pardoned ; the Lords resolved upon an address, 
which was reported and agreed to on the 11th, and on the 15th, 
presented, on the subject; detailing what steps they had taken in 
the matter. The whole affair ended in an address to her Majesty, 
that she would be pleased to issue out her proclamation for that 
purpose; which her Majesty complied with; offering a reward 
of £300 ; but Jonathan Swift, the supposed author, remained 
undiscovered. 

The Commons also took up the Queen's speech, which ended in 
long discussions on three pamphlets by Richard Steele, Esq., a 
member of that House; namely, the Englishman, the Crisis, and 
also another number of the Englishrnnn ; when the following reso- 
lution was proposed to the House, and carried by all the force of 
the government, by 245 votes against 152, which ended in the expul- 
sion of Richard Steele, Esq., from the House of Commons : — 

" That a printed pamphlet, entitled the Englishman, being the 
close of a paper so called ; and one other pamphlet, entitled the 
Crisis, written by Richard Steele, Esq., a member of that House, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 429 

were scandalous and seditious libels, containing many expressions 
highly reflecting upon her Majesty, and upon the nobility, gentry, 
clergy, and universities of the kingdom, maliciously insinuating that 
the Protestant succession in the house of Hanover was in danger 
under her Majesty's administration; and tending to alienate the 
affections of her Majesty's good subjects, and to create jealousies 
and divisions among them." 

The state of national affairs at this time was truly alarming, 
the present House of Commons being more corrupt than the last ; 
and the House of Lords being led by the Earl of Wharton (on the 
Protestant succession being in danger), he being the successor, for 
this motion, of the late William Cavendish, the first Duke of Devon- 
shire, who, when alive, appeared to think the motion his own, session 
by session ; backed as he was in the Commons with the same 
motion by Richard Hampden. 

In the beginning of April, the Lords took into consideration the 
state of the nation, particularly "whether the Protestant succession 
was in danger from her Majesty's administration;" which, being 
put to the vote, was carried in the negative by twelve votes. On 
the 12th, they addressed her Majesty, " humbly beseeching her, 
that, whenever she should judge it necessary, she would issue a 
proclamation, promising a suitable reward to any person who should 
apprehend and bring the Pretender to justice, in case he should 
land, or attempt to land, either in Great Britain or Ireland." To 
this the Queen answered, " It would be a real strengthening to the 
succession in the house of Hanover, as well as a support to my 
government, that an end were put to those groundless fears and 
jealousies which have been so industriously promoted. I do not at 
this time see any occasion for such a proclamation; whenever I judge 
it to be necessary, I shall give my orders for having one issued." 

Poor Queen Anne ! — a good, pious, confiding woman, in the hands 
of bad men. From 1702 till 1710, the church was always falling ; 
either the chancel or the steeple had given way ; always, in season 
and out of season, — " The church was in danger," 

till all the town, 



To save the church, had pulled the steeple down. 



430 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Now, in 1710, the church was saved by Harley, St. John, Leslie, 
Swift, Prior, Gay, and others; when the cry ceased; but then the 
cry of the throne was in danger was raised in the House of Lords, 
in the Commons, and through the country; till the poor Queen's life 
must have been truly miserable, and it did, in fact, hasten her end ; 
for she died at an age not exceeding fifty years. This poor woman 
was fairly worried to death, as we shall presently see. The Com- 
mons forced the poor Queen to offer a reward of £100,000 for the 
apprehending the Pretender whenever he should land, or attempt to 
land, in her Majesty's dominions. The Lords backed this procla- 
mation and reward ; and the Earl of Wharton, holding the procla- 
mation in his hand, spoke with great force upon the occasion. 

The state of things, both in Parliament and out, had arrived at 
an awful crisis; which Richard Steele, Esq., thus describes, March 30, 
1714 : — " According to the situation of affairs, nothing but Divine 
Providence can prevent a civil war within a few years ; and against 
such disasters there can be no remedy but preparing our minds for 
the incidents we are to meet with, with cheerfulness." 

These ministers, to fortify their position still more, made an 
attempt to disfranchise the dissenters, by passing a bill through both 
Houses for forcing all dissenters within the pale of the Church of 
England ; which would place a badge of servitude or serfdom upon 
dissenters, act upon their feelings of respectability, or feeling of 
prosperity ; and so be the means of educating dissenters' children 
in church principles ; which was professed to be a " Bill to prevent 
the Growth of Schism" — perhaps I might call it a Privy-Council 
education scheme for the year 1714 : the old French plot of 
Louis XIV. revived ; that plot which Cardinal Richelieu imported 
into France from the Medici of Florence ; where it was created for 
Inquisition purposes by Ignatius Loyola. 

This church-propping act enjoins — 

" That no person in Great Britain and Wales shall keep any 
public or private school, or seminary, or teach or instruct youth, as 
tutor or schoolmaster, that has not first subscribed the declaration 
to conform to the Church of England, and has obtained license from 
the respective diocesan or ordinary of the place ; or upon failure of 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 431 

so doing may be committed to prison without bail or mainprize. 
And that no such license shall be granted before the party produces 
a certificate of his having received the sacrament according to the 
communion of the Church of England, in some parish church, within 
a year before obtaining such license, and hath subscribed the oaths 
of allegiance and supremacy. 

" That if any person, having complied with these points, shall 
knowingly or willingly resort to any conventicle, or be present in 
any assembly where the Queen is not prayed for, should be liable 
to the penalty of this act, and from thenceforth be incapable to keep 
any seminary, or instruct any youth, as tutor or schoolmaster. And 
if any person teaches any other catechism than what is set forth in 
the Common Prayer, his license shall be thenceforth void ; and he 
be liable to the penalties of the act ; but no person to be punished 
twice for the same fact. Any person convicted by this act, con- 
forming to the church for one year without having been present at 
any conventicle, shall be again capacitated." 

This bill met with great opposition in the Lords, many lords 
entering their protests against it ; but yet it soon became law, and 
was to come into effect on the 1st of August, the day on which the 
Queen died. God's name be praised; this weak woman, this tool 
for mischief, was called to her rest ; and the act was repealed as 
soon as her successor George I. came to the throne. 

What is this but a Privy-Council scheme for educating dissenters' 
children into Church-of-England principles ? — " That no person in 
Great Britain and Wales, shall keep any public or private school 
or seminary, or teach or instruct youth, as tutor or schoolmaster, 
that has not first subscribed the declaration to conform to the 
Church of England ; and has obtained license from the respective 
diocesan or ordinary of the place ; or, upon failure of so doing, may 
be committed to prison without bail or mainprize." 

We live in 1859, and Lord Derby is our prime minister, and he 
appoints the several diocesans or licensers of schoolmasters — he 
appoints what he likes, from the Dean of York upwards — he — he 
— the Earl of Derby holds the whole education of the country be- 
tween his finger and thumb. Blood of Simon de Montfort ! In 



432 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

the face of Magna Charta ; in the face of the Bill of Rights ; in the 
face of the Protestant Dissenters of England — I ask : should this be 
so? In the reign of Charles II. and James II., no less than eight 
thousand Protestants were sacrificed — yes ! they and their children 
were sacrificed for their principles — principles which drove James II. 
into exile, and caused him and his son to die paupers and pensioners 
upon the bounty of France ; and yet Queen Anne, who- owed her 
throne entirely from the compact of the glorious Revolution of 
1688, can wipe out the feeling of gratitude to a free people ; anni- 
hilate their rights and privileges ; and place those rights and privi- 
leges in the hands of her prime minister ! Disgraceful ! By the 
betrayed blood of Sir Walter Raleigh ; by the blood of John Hamp- 
den ; of Algernon Sidney ; and Lord William Russell — No ! Lord 
Derby indeed ! Lord Derby might edge off the odds on a horserace; 
or sell a favourite two days before the event, and get his head 
knuckled for doing it; but for Lord Derby, or any other prime 
minister of England, to hold the future destinies of England at the 
beck or nod of his patronage, is truly absurd ; is truly insulting. 

Mr. Bromley, one of the secretaries of state, offered to compomise 
the matter, by withdrawing this bill, if the dissenters would forego 
their privileges of voting for members of Parliament ; and their 
privileges, too, of sitting in the House as members. This comes of 
allowing the executive to tamper with the education of the people; 
the principle is dangerous; and, if carried out, unconstitutional. 
^Whenever we see a government attempting to shackle, by any 
means whatever, the vitality of Protestantism, we may rest assured 
that the whole machinery for enslaving the people is concealed 
somewhere near at hand. The pretence may be religion, or it may 
be education ; but the reality will be found to be slavery, at the 
hands of priestly domination. It is one sect attempting to lord it 
over all other sects. It may be the Church sect, or the Quaker sect, 
or the Methodist sect, the Roman Catholic sect, or the Unitarian 
sect ; Independent or Presbyterian ; Adoniram or Muggletonian : 
call it by what name you like — there it is, and there it will remain; 
so long as the people of England allow it to remain. It is priest- 
craft all over : cant is its means, and oppression is its end. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 433 

While these plots against civil and religious liberty were being 
concocted in the Commons, under the name and pretence of educa- 
tion, a pamphlet appeared — " A Letter to the Dissenters. London, 
sold by John Morphew, near Stationers' Hall, 1715. Price 6d. 
8vo : " a letter written against the Whigs for their neglect on the 
bill against occasional conformity. The object of this pamphlet 
was to prepare the dissenters for what they might expect, and also 
to warn them from trusting in the Whigs for real assistance. It 
is not known who wrote this book ; but common report at the time 
ascribed it to Daniel De Foe ; and Oldmixon, who was a good judge 
of De Foe's movements — for he watched him narrowly with the eye 
of a Whig partisan and well-paid official — Oldmixon, in his " Re- 
marks on the Letter to the Dissenters ; by a Churchman ; London, 
1714; 8vo :" observes: — "It is very easy to discover that the 
author of the ' Letter to the Dissenters ' is some inconsiderable 
wretch, that has sold both his principles and pen to a faction, 
enemies to the liberty of their country. I am ashamed to mark 
out the person on whom this libel is fathered : net so much on 
account of his being rendered infamous by law, as for the greater 
infamy he has loaded himself with, of late years, in the service of 
France and her friends." Old mixon was a well-fed and well-paid 
Whig partisan, or political runner; and of coarse looked up to the 
party as his paymasters ; but De Foe stood higher, and looked upon 
the Whigs as I look upon the Three Tailors of Tooley Street — the 
self-styled people of England. De Foe knew the party of Whigs,« 
and despised them. I have seen something of the party, after the 
lapse of one hundred and fifty years; and I have not an exalted 
opinion of the party. No ? Why not ? Lord John Russell's Church 
Reform Bill, which was a fraud — a fraud ? Yes — dishonest ; before 
God and man, I say, dishonest. A bad shilling passed for a good 
one, upon a confiding people ! It was not necessary that Lord John 
Russell should give a reform in the Church of England ; but, if he 
did give such a measure, that measure should have been honest ; 
but it was not honest. 

W T ell, again, when Cobden, Bright, Wilson, Rawson, and some 
hundreds more, stepped out from the ranks to carry the repeal of 

2b 



434 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

the corn laws, how did certain Whig gentry and Whig M.P.'s act? 
May I say meanly and cowardly; in going before large constituen- 
cies of unbought and unbuyable Englishmen at the election time ; 
and seizing upon the laurels of that victory which Richard Cobden 
and John Bright had won ? Did Whigs do this ? And am I right 
when I say that Whigs were mean, cowardly, and contemptible, 
when they did this ? The Oldmixons of our days, the hired runners 
of party, may rail at the De Foes; but the act of cowardice remains. 
Richard Cobden and John Bright fought the battle ; and you have 
had the meanness to assume the honours of the victory. Did many 
leading Whig politicians, aspiring statesmen, do this, on the corn- 
law agitation ? 

On the 27th of July, 1714, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford and 
Mortimer, was removed from his office of Lord High Treasurer of 
Great Britain. This was done through the intriguing of Boling- 
broke and Mrs.Masham, the Queen's confidential friend; these two 
being especially interested, along with the Queen, in the success of 
the pretensions of the Pretender, to the exclusion of the pretensions 
of the house of Hanover to the throne, on the Queen's demise. 
This removal of the Lord Treasurer from office was accompanied 
with great confusion and loud contention in the council-chamber; 
where warm expostulations and most bitter reproaches passed in 
the Queen's hearing between the falling minister, the Lord Chan- 
cellor, and Lord Bolingbroke. These contentions were carried on 
in the royal presence on the night of the 27th of July, till two 
o'clock the following morning. The following day (July 28th), 
another council was held ; but nothing could be fixed upon as to 
the successor to the Earl of Oxford. A third cabinet council was 
appointed to be held the next day, but was adjourned on account of 
her Majesty's indisposition, which she herself imputed to the fatigue 
and disturbance this affair had created ; she intimating the same to 
her physicians and nearest attendants, and adding that "she should 
hardly outlive it." 



CHAPTER X. 

The poor Queen was now very ill, the physicians and surgeons 
summoned, and a privy council called; to which the Dukes of 
Somerset and Argyle went uninvited, they claiming their privilege 
as privy councillors ; others followed their example in quick suc- 
cession ; Bolingbroke and Mrs. Masham were outmarched by their 
opponents : the Queen was dead ; and the council was seized by a 
strong majority of adherents of the house of Hanover; and from 
this moment — down went the prospects of the Pretender. 

Immediate steps were at once taken for the security of the cities 
of London and Westminster, even two days before the Queen's 
death; and orders were given to the heralds at arms, and the Life 
Guards (for the Queen might die at any moment), to be in readi- 
ness to mount at the first warning, in order to proclaim the Elector 
of Hanover, King of Great Britain ; and as Portsmouth had been 
left in a defenceless state (perhaps on purpose), six hundred men, 
out-pensioners of Chelsea Hospital, were marched there under 
Colonel Pocock, and such half-pay officers as were at hand ; Briga- 
dier Whetham was ordered off to Scotland ; and the same day the 
fleet was placed under the command of the Earl of Berkeley. 

Her Majesty expired on the 1st of August, in the fiftieth year of 
her age ; a good woman as wife, mother, and queen ; but— yet not 
a woman of a strong mind — No ! she was a weak-minded woman, 
the prey of bad, designing men. While all this was going on at 
court, Dr. Jonathan Swift was skulking off to Reading, in Berk- 
shire, till the Queen should die, and be buried; when he further 
skulked to Ireland, to his deanery of St. Patrick's, the proceeds of 
his iniquity ; where he remained for the remainder of his life. 

De Foe, in his Appeal to Honour and Justice, affirms, " that no 
sooner was the Queen dead, and the King, as right required, pro- 

28* 



436 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

claimed, but the rage of men increased upon me to that degree, 
that the threats and insults I received were such as I am not able 
to express. If I offered to say a word in favour of the present 
settlement, it was called fawning and twining round again. On the 
other hand, though I have meddled neither one way or other, nor 
written one book since the Queen's death, yet a great many things 
are called by my name; and I bear every day the reproaches which 
all the answerers of those books cast, as well upon the subject as 
the authors. I have not seen nor spoken to my Lord of Oxford 
but once since the King's landing, nor received the least message, 
order, or writing, from his lordship, or any other way corresponded 
with him ; jet he bears the reproach of my writing in his defence; 
and I the rage of men for doing it. I cannot say it is no affliction 
to me to be thus used, though my being entirely clear of the fact, 
is a true support to me/' 

From the above quotation it would appear that the public believed 
De Foe to be connected with the ministry when he wrote the three 
pamphlets on the Pretender's coming; and also that they believed 
him to be in favour of the Pretender when he wrote those pamphlets. 

On the appearing shortly afterwards of the Secret History of the 
White Staff, the public were only confirmed in their previous 
opinion of that connection subsisting between the late ministry and 
De Foe ; on which Oldmixon, in his History of England, vol. iii. 
p. 537, observes: — " One cannot doubt but the Secret History of the 
White Staff, a pamphlet Foe wrote soon after King George's acces- 
sion to the throne, was by the Earl of Oxford's directions; and that 
the most natural hints for it came from him, because the whole 
treatise is calculated for his vindication ; and Foe depended upon 
him too much to dare to publish any such thing without his parti- 
cipation and consent." 

As the tide of popular feeling had fully set in against De Foe 
after the writing (as was supposed) in favour of the Pretender ; and 
also his writing a vindication of Harley in his administration of 
public affairs; he, poor fellow, was fairly hooted from the ground of 
politics ; that ground on which he had done more than any living 
man on behalf of civil and religious liberty ; and he had done it for 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 437 

the detraction of all parties, and without the thanks of any mortal 
man. He lived isolated for thirty years as a politician ; neglected 
by Whigs and abhorred by Tories. Howe would not pray with 
him when in Newgate, in 1 703 ; and Jonathan Swift did not know 
the fellow 's name ! 

De Foe now wrote " An Appeal to Honour and Justice, though 
it be of his worst Enemies. By Daniel De Foe. Being a true 
Account of his Conduct in Public Affairs. Jer. xvii. 18. London, 
printed for J. Baker, 1715. 8vo, pp. 58 :" in which he commences 
by hoping " the time is come at last, when the voice of moderate 
principles may be heard. Hitherto the noise has been so great, and 
the prejudices and passions of men so strong, that it had been but 
in vain to offer any argument, or for any man to talk of giving a 
reason for his actions ; and this alone has been the cause why, when 
other men, who, I think, have less to say in their own defence, are 
appealing to the public, and struggling to defend themselves, I alone 
have been silent under the infinite clamours and reproaches, cause- 
less curses, unusual threatenings, and the most unjust and injurious 
treatment in the world. 

" I hear much of people calling out to punish the guilty ; but 
very few are concerned to clear the innocent. I hope some will be 
inclined to judge impartially, and have yet reserved so much of the 
Christian as to believe, and at least to hope, that a rational creature 
cannot abandon himself so as to act without some reason, and are 
willing not only to have me defend myself, but to be able to answer 
for me; when they hear me causelessly insulted by others, and, 
therefore, are willing to have such arguments put into their mouths 
as the cause will bear. 

(f 1. I think I have been long enough made fabula vulgi, and 
borne the weight of general slander; and I should be wanting to 
truth, to my family, and to myself, if I did not give a fair and true 
state of my conduct, for impartial men to judge of, when I am no 
more in being to answer for myself. — 2. By the hint of mortality, 
and by the infirmities of a life of sorrow and fatigue, I have reason 
to think I am not a great way from, if not very near to, the great 
ocean of eternity, and the time may not be long ere I embark on 



438 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

the last voyage. Wherefore, I think I should have even accounts 
with this world before I go, that no actions (slanders) may lie 
against my heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, to disturb 
them in the peaceable possession of their father's (character) in- 
heritance. — 3. I fear — God grant I have not a second sight in it — 
that this lucid interval of temper and moderation, which shines, 
though dimly too, upon us at this time, will be but of short con- 
tinuance, and that some men, who know not how to use the advan- 
tage God has put into their hands with moderation, will push, in 
spite of the best prince in the world, at such extravagant things, 
and act with such an intemperate forwardness, as will revive the 
heats and animosities which wise and good men were in hopes should 
be allayed by the happy accession of the King to the throne." 

" I come next to the general clamour of the ministry being for 
the Pretender. I must speak my sentiments solemnly and plainly, 
as I always did in that matter, viz., that if it was so, I did not see 
it, nor did I ever see reason to believe it ; this I am sure of, that if 
it was so, I never took one step in that kind of service ; nor did I 
ever hear one word spoken by any one of the ministry, that I had 
the honour to know or converse with, that favoured the Pretender ; 
but have had the honour to hear them all protest, that there was no 
design to oppose the succession of Hanover in the least. It may be 
objected to me, that they might be in the interest of the Pretender 
for all that ; it is true they might ; but that is nothing to me. I 
am not vindicating their conduct, but my own ; as I never was em- 
ployed in anything that way, so I do still protest, I do not believe 
it was ever in their design ; and I have many reasons to confirm my 
thoughts, which are not material to the present case. But, be that 
as it will, it is enough to me that I acted nothing in any such 
interest, neither did I ever sin against the Protestant succession of 
Hanover in thought, word, or deed ; and if the ministry did, I did 
not see it, or so much as suspect them of it. It was a disaster to 
the ministry, to be driven to the necessity of taking that set of men 
by the hand, who, nobody can deny, were in that interest ; but as 
the former ministry answered, when they were charged with a 
design to overthrow the church, because they were favoured, joined 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 439 

with, and were united to the dissenters ; I say they answered, that 
they made use of the dissenters, but granted them nothing (which, 
by the way, was too true) ; so those gentlemen answer, that it is 
true they made use of the Jacobites, but did nothing for them. But 
this by the bye. Necessity is pleaded by both parties for doing 
things which neither side can justify. I wish both sides would for 
ever avoid the necessity of doing evil ; for certainly it is the worst 
plea in the world, and generally made use of for the worst things. 

" I have often lamented the disaster which employing Jacobites 
was to the ministry ; and certainly it gave the greatest handle to 
their enemies. But there was no medium. The Whigs refused 
to show them a safe retreat, or to give them the least opportunity 
to take any other measures, but at the risk of their own destruc- 
tion ; and they ventured upon that course in hopes of being able to 
stand alone at last, without help of either the one or the other ; in 
which, no doubt, they were mistaken. However, in this part, as I 
was always assured, and have good reason to believe, that her 
Majesty was steady in the interest of the house of Hanover ; so, as 
nothing was ever offered tome, or required of me, to the prejudice 
of that interest, on what ground can I be reproached with the secret 
reserved designs of any, if they had such designs, as I verily believe 
they had not ?." 

Poor De Foe ! — his unfortunate connection with the late ministry, 
and the odium that connection threw upon him, preyed so upon his 
spirits, as to bring on an attack of apoplexy; which endangered his 
life for a long period, and laid him up altogether from literary pur- 
suits for many months ; the attack leaving him in a very precarious 
and shattered condition of health for a long time. 

In the early part of the year 1715, "The Family Instructor; in 
three Parts; with a Becommendatory Letter by the Bev. S. Wright. 
London, sold by Emanuel Matthews, at the Bible in Paternoster 
Bow," appeared; the work being divided into three portions: — 
1 : To Father and Children. 2 : To Masters and Servants. 3 : To 
Husbands and Wives. This work had a great run for many years, 
and passed through twenty editions or more ; and especially in years 



440 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

soon after the accession of George I. to the throne ; because the 
name of the author (Daniel De Foe) was studiously kept out of 
sight; the author fearing that his name and reputation would 
damage the usefulness of the book, in the domestic family circle. 
The royal children of the court of George I. were instructed in it; 
and the copy used in the royal nursery is still kept as a relic in the 
British Museum. I would gladly have given a long quotation from 
so truly valuable a book ; but the dialogue style and lengthy subject 
prevent the extracts being made profitably ; especially when there 
are books which will imperatively call for copious extracts. 

In 1718, De Foe published a second volume to the above, entitled 
" The Family Instructor ; in two Parts. 1 : Relating to Family 
Breaches, and their obstructing Religious Duties. 2 : To the great 
mistake in mixing the Passions in the Management and Correcting 
of Children. With a great variety of Cases relating to setting ill 
Examples to Children and Servants. Vol. ii. London, printed for 
Emanuel Matthews, at the Bible in Paternoster Row, 1718." 

In 1719 appeared the work which has been the most read; and 
which alone would have handed the name of the author as one of 
Eugland's greatest geniuses to the furthest posterity — and that book 
is entitled " The Life and strange surprising Adventures of Robin- 
son Crusoe, of York, Mariner; who lived eight-and -twenty years 
all alone in an uninhabited Island on the Coast of America, near 
the Mouth of the Great River Oroonoque; having been cast on 
shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. 
With an Account how he was at last strangely delivered by Pirates. 
Written by Himself. London, printed for William Taylor, at the 
Ship, in Paternoster Row, 1719." The first edition was issued with 
the following modest preface : — 

ff If ever the story of any private man's adventures in the world 
were worth making public, and were acceptable when published, the 
Editor of this account thinks this will be so. The wonders of this 
man's life exceed all that he thinks are to be found extant ; the life 
of one man being scarce capable of a greater variety. The story is 
told with modesty, with seriousness, and with a religious application 



LIFE OF DE TOE. 441 

of events to the uses to which wise men always apply them, viz., to 
the instructions of others by example; and to justify and honour the 
wisdom of Providence in all the variety of their circumstances, let 
them happen how they will. The Editor believes the thing to be a 
just history of fact ; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it. 
However this may be, for all such things are disputed, he is of 
opinion that the improvement of it, as well as the diversion, as to 
the instruction of the reader, will be the same; and as such, he 
thinks, without further compliment to the world, he does them a 
great service in the publication/' 

Shortly afterwards appeared "The Further Adventures of Robin- 
son Crusoe ; being the Second and last Part of his Life, and the 
strange surprising Accounts of his Travels round three Parts of the 
Globe. Written by Himself. To which is added, a Map of the 
World, in which is delineated the Voyages of Robinson Crusoe. 
London, printed for William Taylor, 1719." The following is the 
Preface to this Second Part : — 

" The success the former part of this work has met with in the 
world, has yet been no other than is acknowledged to be due to the 
surprising variety of the subject, and the agreeable manner of the 
performance. All the endeavours of envious people to reproach it 
with being a romance, to search it for errors in geography, incon- 
sistency in the relation, and contradictions in the fact, have proved 
abortive, and as impotent as malicious. The just application of 
every incident, the religious and useful inferences drawn from every 
part, are so many testimonies to the good design of making it 
public, and must legitimate all the parts that may be called inven- 
tion, or parable, in the story. The second part, if the Editor's 
opinion may pass, is (contrary to the usage of second parts, every 
way as entertaining as the first, contains as strange and surprising 
incidents, and as great a variety of them. Nor is the application 
less serious or suitable ; and doubtless will, to the sober as well as 
ingenious reader, be every way as profitable and diverting. And 
this makes the abridging this work as scandalous as it is knavish 
and ridiculous ; seeing, while to shorten the book that they may 



442 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

seem to reduce the value, they strip it of all those reflections, as 
well religious as moral, which are not only the greatest beauties of 
the work, but are calculated for the infinite advantage of the reader. 
By this, they leave the work naked of its brightest ornaments ; and 
if they would, at the same time, pretend that the author has sup- 
plied the story out of his own invention, they take from it the 
improvement which alone recommends that invention to wise and 
good men. The injury these men do the proprietor of this work, is 
a practice all honest men abhor ; and he believes he may challenge 
them to show the difference between that and robbing on the high- 
way, or breaking open a house. If they can't show any difference 
in the crime, they will find it hard to show why there should be any 
difference in the punishment ; and he will answer for it, that nothing 
shall be wanting on his part to do them justice." 

These two books on Robinson Crusoe were followed by yet another 
named " Serious Reflections during the Life and surprising Ad- 
ventures of Robinson Crusoe, with his Vision of the Angelick 
World. London, printed for William Taylor, at the Ship and Black 
Swan, in Paternoster Row, 1720." This work is believed to con- 
tain many events gathered from his own life ; perhaps his remarks 
on solitude, slander, &c. ; and also the twenty-eight years passed by 
an individual, with whom he was acquainted, would be very appli- 
cable to himself; besides the description of the Thanksgiving Day 
at St. Paul's, when Queen Anne went in state to offer praises to the 

God of all victories, on the victory of being obtained, 

when he paid three guineas for a seat to see the mummeries per- 
formed there. Perhaps the domestic fireside of the poet or book- 
writer is not the place we should go to in search of domestic hap- 
piness ; for the poet is always absorbed in thought ; annoyed at 
slight noises from the wife or children ; irritable from want of 
exercise, and perhaps sleep ; neglectful of the ordinary cares and 
attentions to the means of subsistence for the family ; annoyed by 
the dunning visits of printers and paper-merchants, connected with 
the getting up of the last two books ; besides the claims of the land- 
lord, the baker, butcher, schoolmaster, and a host of others, however 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 443 

small, all looking for a periodical settling of their small accounts, 
independent of the sale of a poem or a satire, a history or a romance. 
What does the kitchen know or care about Robinson Crusoe of York, 
Moll Flanders, Captain Singleton, or Duncan Campbell ? And the 
poor poet's wife, too, soon begins to compare notes with Mrs. Clark 
of the bakehouse, or Mrs. Jebb, the butcher's wife; when poetry and 
embarrassments and rags are to be laid in the opposite scale to 
money, good trade, increasing circumstances, and a happy disposi- 
tion, with a cheerful countenance ; when family discord follows ; 
the poet is a butt in his own house for wife and children, who look 
upon their poor father as a crazling and a fool ; he returns the com- 
pliment in thought and word, " he having married a fool, and all the 
children braiding after the mother — for at their house they had 
naught but fools." 

This supposed description of a poet's family is as follows : — 
" I have heard of a man, that upon some extraordinary disgust 
which he took at the unsuitable conversation of some of his nearest 
relations, whose society he could not ^ivoid, suddenly resolved never 
to speak any more. He kept his resolution most rigorously many 
years ; not all the tears or entreaties of his friends, no, not of his wife 
and children, could prevail with him to break his silence. It seems it 
was their ill behaviour to him at first was the occasion of it ; for 
they treated him with provoking language, which frequently put 
him into indecent passions, and urged him to rash replies ; and he 
took this severe way to punish himself for being provoked, and to 
punish them for provoking him. But the severity was unjustifiable : 
it ruined his family, and broke up his house. His wife could not 
bear it, and, after endeavouring by all the ways possible to alter his 
rigid silence, went first away from him ; and afterwards away from 
herself, turning melancholy and distracted. His children separated, 
some one way and some another way, and only one daughter, who 
loved her father above all the rest, kept with him; tended him, 
talked to him by signs, and lived almost dumb, like her father, 
nearly twenty-nine years with him ; till being very sick and in a 
high fever, delirious as we call it, or light-headed, he broke his 



414 LIFE OF Dli FOE, 

silence, not knowing- when he did it, and spoke, though wildly at 
first. He recovered of the illness afterwards, and frequently talked 
with his daughter, but not much, and very seldom to anybody else. 

" Yet this man did not live a silent life with respect to himself. 
He read continually, and wrote down many excellent things, which 
deserved to have appeared in the world ; and was often heard to pray 
to God in his solitudes very audibly, and with great fervency; but the 
injustice which his rash vow, if it was a vow of silence, was to his 
family, and the length he carried it, was so unjustifiable another way, 
that I cannot say his instructions could have much force in them." 

Now, this is very likely to have been taken from his own life, for 
he read continually, and wrote down many excellent things ; which is 
true of De Foe : he read continually. He was as a man always con- 
versing with the dead ; he made his bed among the tombs ; his 
family would be comparatively strangers to him ; and the feelings 
of the one would be alien to the other. He was a poet — a writer 
and a philosopher ; and his family felt this, and they made him feel 
it too ; for he, their father, was not like other fathers : he wrote and 
read and ran away ; while they worked and stayed at home ; as 
Mrs. Pikelet, the baker's wife, would sometimes tell Mrs. Foe, what 
her husband often said, that it would not do for him to be sitting 
all day through, cross-legged, reading a book by the fireside. This 
poetic life must have involved misery to all — father, mother, and 
children ; for the butcher could not be paid, and the offer of a deposit 
of the last impression of Mother Ross as a security, would only be 
a poor consolation to a butcher wanting ready cash, with which to 
enter Smithfield Market as a purchaser ; for what could he do with 
five hundred copies of Mother Ross in sheets, there ? 

This poetic genius, who had to take off from his creditors for 
weeks, months, and years together (for twenty-eight years, as has 
been stated), except on Sundays, when a man cannot be arrested for 
debt, wrote largely on Honesty ; and went so far as to classify the 
varieties of this moral quality, till he had arrived at thirty -eight 
sorts, which he was preparing to lay before the public in an elabo- 
rate book on the subject. 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 445 

In the work now before us, we have several chapters on Honesty; 
but not that elaborate classification of genus, species, and variety, as 
might have been expected from the elaborate book on this subject, 
promised by the author. 

Speaking of the genus Honesty, or class honesty, or honesty in 
general, he says : — 

"This true honesty, too, has some little difference in it, according 
to the soil or climate in which it grows ; and your simplers have 
had some disputes about the sorts of it; nay, there have been great 
heats about the several kinds of this plant, which grows in different 
countries, and some call that honesty which others say is not ; as par- 
ticularly they say, there is a sort of honesty in this country — York- 
shire honesty; which differs very much from that which is found in 
these southern parts about London. Then there is a sort of Scots 
honesty, which they say is a meaner sort than that of Yorkshire. 
In New England, I have heard they have a kind of honesty which 
is worse than the Scottish, and little better than the wild honesty, 
called cunning, which I mentioned before. On the other hand, they 
tell us, that in some parts of Asia, at Smyrna and at Constantinople, 
the Turks have a better sort of honesty than any of us. I am sorry 
our Turkey Company have not imported some of it, that we might 
try whether it would thrive here or no." 

After going through several sorts of honesty, he at last comes to 
Relative Honesty, on which he says that — 

" A wife and children are creditors to the father of the family ; 
and he cannot be an honest man that does not discharge his debt 
to them, any more than he could if he did not repay money bor- 
rowed to a stranger; and not to lead my reader on to intricate and 
disputed particulars ; I instance principally in those that nobody 
can dispute; as, first, Education. By this I mean, not only put- 
ting children to school, which some parents think is all they have 
to do with or for their children ; and indeed, with some, is all that 
they know how to do or are fit to do ; I say, I do not meau this 
only, but several other additional cares, as — 1 : Directing what 
school, what parts of learning, is proper for them ; what improve- 



446 LIFE OF DE FOB. 

merits they are to be taught. 2 : Studying the genius and capaci- 
ties of their children in what they teach them : some children will 
voluntarily learn one thing, and can never be forced to learn 
another ; and, for want of which observing the genius of children, 
we have so many learned blockheads in the world, who are mere 
scholars, pedants, and no more. 3 : But the main part of this debt, 
which relative honesty calls upon us to pay our children, is the debt 
of Instruction, the debt of government, the debt of example. He 
that neglects to pay any of these to his family, is a relative knave ; 
let him value himself upon his honesty in paying his other debts as 
much as he will. 

" Secondly : After the debt of Education, there is the debt of In- 
duction due from us to our children. The debt from a parent is 
far from ending when the children come from school, as the brutes 
who turn their young off from them when they are just able to pick 
for themselves. It is our business, doubtless, to introduce them 
into the world, and to do it in such a manner as suits the circum- 
stances we are in, as to their supply, and the inclinations and capa- 
cities of our children. This is a debt, the want of paying which 
makes many children too justly reproach their parents with neglect- 
ing them in their youth, and not giving them the necessary intro- 
duction into the world, as might have qualified them to struggle 
and shift for themselves. Not to do this, is to ruin our children 
negatively, on one hand, as doing it without judgment, and without 
regard to our family in circumstances and our children's capacities, 
is a positive ruining them on the other. 

" I could very usefully run out this part into a long discourse on 
the necessity there is of consulting the inclinations and capacities 
of our children, in our placing them out in the world. How many 
a martial spirit do we find damned to trade; while we spoil many a 
good porter, and convert the able limbs and bones of a blockhead 
into the figure of a long robe, or a gown and cassock? How many 
awkward, clumsy fellows do we breed to surgery, or to music, whose 
figures and joints, Nature originally designed, and plainly showed 
it us by their size, were better fitted for the blacksmith's sledge 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 447 

or the carpenter's axe, the waterman's oar or the carman's whip? 
Whence comes it to pass, that we have so many young men brought 
up to the bar, and to the pulpit, with stammering tongues, hesita- 
tions and impediments in their speech, unmusical voices, and no 
common utterance; while, on the other hand, Nature's cripples, 
bow-legged, battle-haru'd, and half-made creatures, are bred tum- 
blers and dan cing- masters ? 

"I name these, because they occur most to our common observa- 
tion, and are all miserable examples where the children curse the 
knavery of their fathers in not paying the debt they owed to them 
as parents ; in putting them to employments that had been suitable 
to their capacities, and suitable to what Nature had cut them 
out for. 

" I came into a public-house once in London, where there was a 
black Mulatto-look'd man sitting talking very warmly among some 
gentlemen, who, I observed, were listening very attentively to what 
he said ; and I sat myself down and did the like. 'Twas with great 
pleasure I heard him discourse very handsomely on several weighty 
subjects j I found he was a very good scholar, had been very hand- 
somely bred, and that learning and study were his delight; and, 
more than that, some of the best science was at that time his em- 
ployment ; at length I took the freedom to ask him if he were born 
in England ? He replied with a great deal of good humour in his 
manner, but with an excess of resentment at his father, and with 
tears in his eyes, ( Yes, yes, sir, I am a true-born Englishman, to 
my father's shame be it spoken ; who, being an Englishman him- 
self, could find in his heart to join himself to a Negro woman; 
though he must needs know the children he should beget would 
curse the memory of such an action, and abhor his very name for 
the sake of it. If it had not been for this black face of mine,' said 
he, then smiling, C I had been bred to the law, or brought up in the 
study of divinity ; but my father gave me learning to no purpose, 
for he knew I should never be able to rise by it to anything but a 
learned valet-de-chambre. What he put me to school for, I cannot 
imagine ; he spoiled a good tarpawling when he strove to make me 



448 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

a gentleman. When he had resolved to marry a slave, and lie with 
a slave, he should have begotten slaves, and let us have been bred 
as we were born. But he has twice ruined me : first, with getting me 
with a frightful face; and then going to paint a gentleman upon me/ 

" It was a most affecting discourse indeed, and as such I record 
it ; and I found it ended with tears from the person who was in 
himself the most deserving, modest, and judicious person that I ever 
met with under a Negro countenance in my life. 

" After this story, I persuaded myself I need say no more to this 
case. The education of our children, their instruction, and the 
introducing them into the world, is a part of honesty — a debt we 
owe them ; and he cannot be an honest man that does not, to the 
utmost of his ability and judgment, endeavour to pay it." 

That chapter on Dishonesty in Religion contains a very amusing 
account of the Queen's visit to St. Paul's, to return thanks for 
certain victories obtained by sea and land, at the commencement 
of her reign. This public demonstration was blazoned forth on all 
hands as the grand event of the reign ; so De Foe makes his 
Robinson Crusoe attend, to see what difference he could perceive be- 
tween civilized life in London, and savage life on a desolate island. 

Robinson Crusoe observes on his warm inquiries after religion, 

"that a thanksgiving on the battle of , for the victory 1 gained 

by the English forces and their confederates, over the French, was 
to be celebrated or performed in all state, at St. Paul's ; and it so 
happened, that while he was thus warm in his inquiries after this 
religious exhibition, a proclamation came out in London for appoint- 
ing this General Thanksgiving for this great victory, 

" I started at the noise, when they cried it in the streets. ' Hah/ 
said I, ' then I have found it at last ; ' and I rejoiced in particular, 
that having looked so much abroad for religion, I should find it out 
at home. I then began to cpII myself a thousand fools, that I had 
not saved myself all this labour, and looked at home first ; though, 
by-the-bye, I had done no more in this than other travellers often, 

1 This modest retiring routing of the French ; this victory of ! Could it 

be one of Sir Greorge Rooke's, the Lord High Admiral of England ? 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 449 

or indeed, generally do, viz., go abroad to see the world, and search 
into the curiosities of foreign countries, and know nothing of their 
own. 

"I was resolved to see the ceremonies of this pious piece of work 
(the thanksgiving for the victory of ) ; and, as the prepara- 
tions for it were prodigiously great, I inquired how it would be ; 
but nobody could remember that the like had ever been in their 
time before. Every one said it would be very fine ; that the Queen 
would be there herself, and all the nobility ; and that the like had 
never been seen since Queen Elizabeth's time. What, thought I, 
can be the reason of that ? and, musing a little, ' O ! ' says I to 
myself, f now I have found it : I suppose nobody gives God thanks 
in our country but queens/ But this looked a little harsh, and I 
rummaged our histories a little for my further satisfaction ; but 
could make nothing of it. At last, talking of it to a good old 
Cavalier, that had been a soldier for King Charles ; ' 0/ says he, 
{ I can tell you the reason of it : they have never given thanks/ says 
he, ' because they have had nothing to give thanks for. Pray/ says 
he, ' when have they had any victories in England since Queen 
Elizabeth's time, except two or three in Ireland in King William's 
time ; and then they were so busy ; had so many other losses with 
them abroad, that they were ashamed to give thanks for them.' 
This I found had too much truth in it; however bitter, the jest of 
it but still heightened my expectations, and made me look for some 
strange seriousness and religious thankfulness in the appearance 
that was to be on the occasion in hand ; and accordingly I secured 
myself a place, both without and within the church, where I might 
be a witness to every part of the devotion and joy of the people. 

" But my expectations were wound up to a greater pitch, when I 
saw the infinite crowds of people throng with so much zeal ; as I, 
like a charitable coxcomb, thought it to be, to the place of the 
worship of God ; and, when I considered that it was to give God 
thanks for a great victory, I could think of nothing else than the 
joy of the Israelites, when they landed on the banks of the sea, 
and saw Pharaoh's army, horses, and chariots, swallowed up behind 
them ; and I doubted not I should hear something like the song of 

29 



450 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Moses and the children of Israel on the occasion ; and should hear 
it sung with the same elevation of soul. 

" But when I came to the point, the first thing I observed was, 
that nine parts of ten of all the company came there only to see the 
Queen and the show ; and the other tenth part, I think, might be 
said to make the show. 

" When the Queen came to the rails, and descended from her 
coach, the people, instead of crying out ( Hosannah ! blessed be the 
Queen that cometh in the name of the Lord ' — I say, the people 
cried ' Murder/ and ' Help, for God's sake ! ' treading upon one 
another, and stifling one another, at such a rate, that in the rear 
of the two lines of crowds of people, through which the Queen 
passed, it looked something like a battle, where the wounded were 
retired to die ; and to get surgeons to come to them ; for there they 
lay, heaps of women and children dragged from among the feet of 
the crowd, and gasping for breath. I went among some of them, 
and asked them, what made them go into such a crowd ? And their 
answer was all the same : ' O, sir, I had a mind to see the Queen, 
as the rest did/ 

" Well, I had my answer here indeed : for, in short, the whole 
business of the thanksgiving without doors, was to see the Queen, 
that was plain; so I went away to my stand, which, for no less 
than three guineas, I had secured in the church. When I came 
there, it was my fate to be placed between the seats where the men 
of God performed the service of his praise; and sung out the 
anthems and the Te Deum, which celebrated the religious triumphs 
of the day. As to the men themselves, I liked their office, their 
vestments, and their appearance ; all looked awful and grave enough, 
suitable in some respects to the solemnity of a religious triumph ; 
and I expected they would be as solemn in their performances as 
the Levites that bio wed the trumphets at Solomon's feast, when all 
the people shouted and praised God. 

"But I observed these grave people, in the intervals of their 
worshipping God, when it was not their turn to sing or read or 
pray, bestowed some of the rest of their time in taking snuff; ad- 
justing their perukes, looking about at the fair ladies, whispering, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 451 

and that not very softly neither, to one another, about this fine 
lady, that pretty woman, this fine dutchess, and that great fortune ; 
and not without some indecencies, as well of words as of gestures. 
{ Well/ says I, ' you are none of the people I look for ; where are 
they that give God thanks ? ' Immediately the organ struck up for 
the Te Deum, up starts all my gentlemen as if inspired from above ; 
and from their talking together, not over modestly, fall to praising 
God with the utmost precipitation; singing the heavenly anthems 
with all the grace and music imaginable. 

" In the middle of all this music, and these exalted things, when 
I thought my soul elevated with divine melody, and began to be 
reconciled to all the rest, I saw a little rustling motion among the 
people, as if they had been disturbed or frightened. Some said 
it thundered, some said the church shook. The true business 
was, the Te Deum within was answered without by the thunder of 
one hundred pieces of cannon, and the noise of drums, with the 
huzzas and shouts of great crowds of people in the streets. This I 
did not understand, so it did neither disturb nor concern me; I 
found, indeed, no great harmony in it; it bore no consort in the 
music ; at least as I understood it ; but it was over pretty soon, and 
so we went on. 

" When the anthem was sung, and the other services succeeded 
them, I, that had been a little disturbed with the lucid intervals of 
the choristers, and the gentlemen that sat crowded in with them, 
turned my eyes to other places, in hopes I should find some saints 
among the crowd, whose souls were taken up with the exalted rap- 
tures of the day. 

" But, alas ! it was all one ; the ladies were busy singling out the 
men, and the men the ladies. The star and garter of a fine young 
nobleman, beautiful in person, rich in habit, and sparkling in jewels 
— his blue ribbond intimating his character, drew the eyes of so 
many women off their Prayer Books, that I think his grace ought 
to have been spoken to by the vergers, to have withdrawn out of the 
church; that he might not injure the service, and rob God Almighty 
of the homage of the day. 

" As for the Queen, her Majesty was the star of the day ; and 

29* 



452 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

infinitely more eyes were directed to her than were lifted up to 
heaven ; though the last was the business of the whole procession. 
' Well !' said I, ' this is mighty fine ! that 's true ; but where is the 
religion of all this ? Heavens bless me ! ' said I, ' out of this crowd ; 
and I '11 never mock God any more here, when the Queen comes 
again.' 

" Cannot these people go and see the Queen, where the Queen is 
to be seen, but must they come hither to prophane the church with 
her, and to make the Queen an idol ? And in a great passion I was, 
both at the people and at the manner of the day, as you may easily 
see by what follows. 

"I confess the close of the day was still more extravagant j for 
there the thanksgiving was adjourned from the church to the tavern, 
and to the street ; and, instead of the decency of a religious triumph, 
there was indeed a triumph of religious indecency ; and the anthems, 
75? Deum, and thanksgiving of the day, ended in the drunkenness, 
the bonfires, and the squibs and crackers of the street. 

" How far religion is concerned in all this, or whether God 
Almighty will accept of these noisy doings for thanksgivings, that I 
have nothing to do with; let those people consider of it that are 
concerned in it." 

Before quitting the Robinson- Crusoe books altogether for other 
subjects, I may offer a remark on the name Crusoe, which would be 
very familiar to De Foe ; for Timothy Cruso, afterwards an eminent 
divine, was a pupil with Mr. Morton, at Newington Green Academy; 
probably at the same time that De Foe was there. 

In 1719 appeared "The Dumb Philosopher; a faithful Account 
of Dickory Cronke, a man dumb for fifty-eight years, but able to 
speak a few days before he died." Next came " The Life, Adven- 
tures, and Pyracies of Captain Singleton ;" a second ship-wrecked 
mariner story ; a work as voluminous and perhaps as interesting as 
his Robinson Crusoe. Then came out the life of another dumb 
gentleman, Duncan Campbell, " who could write down a stranger's 
name at first sight." Then appeared another volume of "The 
Dumb Projector; or, Duncan Campbell's Voyage to Holland." 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 453 

Then came " The Mysteries of Magic ; a Work on Daemons, Genii, 
or Familiar Spirits." Then appeared " The Secret Memoirs of the 
late Mr. Duncan Campbell." Then a poem on " The Complete Art 
of Painting." Then came " Christian Conversation ; in six Dia- 
logues." Then came out, from his Newgate notes, " Fortunes and 
Misfortunes of Moll Flanders." Then came "Colonel Jacque, 
vulgarly called Colonel Jack." Then appeared his " Memoirs 
of a Cavalier." Then appeared the History of the Plague, en- 
titled " Journal of the Plague Year." Then appeared " Religious 
Courtship," 

The above works appeared in quick succession, with others not 
named, and not known with certainty to be his, during a period of 
six years; or from 1719 to 1724. I could not go into them for 
extracts ; I have no room ; suffice it to say, that the late Sir Walter 
Scott edited an edition of these novels, in 20 vols. 12mo ; and also 
Mr. Hazlitt's large octavo work, in three closely printed volumes, 
contains most of these volumes ; and Mr. Walter Wilson's valuable 
work, in three volumes, has acquired the title of " dull and heavy," 
from his very laudable desire of doing justice to his hero, by giving 
extract or description of every work published — may I not fall into 
the same mistake ? 

In 1724 appeared "Roxana;" and in the same year appeared his 
" Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain," in 3 vols. 8vo. 
Next appeared " The Great Law of Subordination considered ; or, 
the Insolence and Unsufferable Behaviour of Servants in England 
duly inquired into : in Ten Letters." After this came a pamphlet, 
from the same pen, entitled " Every Body's Business is Nobody's 
Business." Soon after appeared "A New Voyage round the World." 
Then " The Voyage of Captain Roberts " appeared. Then " An 
Essay upon Literature; or, an Enquiry into the Antiquity and 
Original of Letters :" 1826, 8vo. Also, in 1726, appeared another 
book, from the same pen, entitled " Mere Nature Delineated ; or, a 
Body without a Soul ; being Observations upon the Young Forester 
lately brought to Town from Germany." Then appeared "The 
Political History of the Devil, as well Ancient as Modern : in Two 
Parts :" 1726, 8vo, pp. 408. Then succeeded "A System of Magic j 



454 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

or, a History of the Black Art :" 1727, 8vo, pp. 403. Then " An 
Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions:" 1727, 8vo, 
pp.395. Then appeared two pamphlets, entitled "The Protestant 
Monastery." Then a work on Select Vestries, entitled " Parochial 
Tyranny." Then a third volume of his " Family Instructor :" 1727, 
8vo, pp. 384. Then a work for married folks, entitled " Conjugal 
Lewdness ; or, Matrimonial Whoredom :" 8vo, pp. 406. Then 
appeared, almost last, though not least — for I consider it to be the 
best book that De Foe ever wrote ; and perhaps it is the best book 
that ever was written in the English language : this is the book 
which tended greatly to form the character of the great Benjamin 
Franklin; for it is Franklin all over. I know I have seen some 
other book named ; but " The Complete English Tradesman " is the 
book that Benjamin Franklin would read ; and it is the book which 
Benjamin Franklin might write. It is, I say again, what I consider 
to be the best work ever written by Daniel De Foe. This book I 
have been lying back for, intending to give some extracts ; which is 
the reason why I have passed over twenty valuable works without a 
comment. The following extracts from this truly valuable book 
may not be uninteresting. 

The Preface contains the following, amongst other valuable 
remarks : — 

" Tradesmen cannot live as tradesmen in the same class used to 
live : customs, and the manner of all the tradesmen round them, 
command a difference; and he that will not do as others do, is 
esteemed as nobody among them, and the tradesman is doomed to 
ruin by fear of the times. 

" In short, there is a fate upon a tradesman : either he must yield 
to the snare of the times, or be the j est of the times ; the young 
tradesman cannot resist it ; he must live as others do, or lose the 
credit of living, and be run down as if he was broke. In a word, he 
must spend more than he can afford to spend, and so be undone; or 
not spend it, and so be undone. If he lives as others do, he breaks, 
because he spends more than he gets ; if he does not, and that is to 
lose his trade, what must he do ? 

" The following directions are calculated for this exigency, and to 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 455 

prepare the young tradesman to stem the attacks of those fatal 
customs, which otherwise, if he yields to them, will inevitably send 
him the way of all the thoughtless tradesmen that have gone be- 
fore him." 

So much of the preface I quote ; I dare not give more, for fear of 
spinning out this article too long, and so tire the reader; and spoil 
by curtailing other notices needful to be mentioned hereafter. 

"A projector is to a tradesman a kind of incendiary; he is in a 
constant plot to blow him up, or set fire to him; for projects are 
generally as fatal to a tradesman as fire in a magazine of gun- 
powder. 

" The honest tradesman is always in danger, and cannot be too 
wary; and therefore, to fortify his judgment, that he may be able 
to guard against such people as these, is one of the most necessary 
things I can do for him. Trade must not be entered into as a thing 
of light concern; it is called business very properly; for it is a 
business for life, and ought to be followed as one of the great 
businesses of life. I do not say the chief, but one of the great 
businesses of life it certainly is ; trade must, I say, be worked at, 
not played with; he that trades in jest, will certainly break in 
earnest; and this is one reason, indeed, why so many tradesmen 
come to so hasty a conclusion of their affairs. 

" Never did you hear of so many commissions of bankrupt every 
week in the Gazette as is now the case (1720) : in a word, whether 
you take the lower sort of tradesmen, or the higher, where there 
was twenty that failed in those days, I believe I speak within com- 
pass, if I say that five hundred turn insolvent now. It is, as I said 
above, an age of pleasure ; and as the wise man said long ago, f he 
that loves pleasure shall be a poor man/ So it is now : His an age 
of drunkenness and extravagance, and thousands ruin themselves 
by that ; 'tis an age of luxurious and expensive living, and thousands 
more undo themselves by that ; but, among all other vices, nothing 
ruins a tradesman so effectually as the neglect of his business : it is 
true, all those things prompt men to neglect their business, but the 
more seasonable is the advice ; either enter upon no trade, under- 
take no business, or, having undertaken it, pursue it diligently. 



456 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

Drive your trade, that the world may not drive you out of trade ; 
and ruin and undo you. 

" Over-trading is among tradesmen as over-lifting is among strong 
men ; such people, vain of their strength, and their pride prompting 
them to put it to the utmost trial, at last lift at something too heavy 
for them, overstrain their sinews, break some of nature's bands, and 
are cripples ever after. I take over-trading to be to a shopkeeper, 
as ambition is to a prince. The late King of France, the great 
King Lewis XIV., ambition led him to invade the dominions of his 
neighbours j and while upon the Empire here, or the States General 
there, or the Spanish Netherlands on another quarter, he was an 
overmatch for every one, and in their single capacity he gained 
from them all; but at last pride made him think himself a match 
for them altogether, and he entered into a declared war against the 
Emperor and the Empire, the Kings of Spain and Great Britain, 
and the States of Holland, all at once. And what was the conse- 
quence? They reduced him to the utmost distress; he lost all his 
conquests ; was obliged, by a dishonourable peace, to quit what he 
had got by encroachment ; to demolish his invincible towns, such 
as Pignerol, Dunkirk, &c, the two strongest fortresses in Europe ; 
and, in a word, like a bankrupt monarch, he may in many cases be 
said to have died a beggar/' 

" For a young tradesman to over-trade himself, is like a young 
swimmer going out of his depth ; when, if help does not come imme- 
diately, 'tis a thousand to one but he sinks, and is drowned. 

" The tradesman that buys warily, always pays surely ; and every 
young beginner ought to buy cautiously : if he has money to pay, 
he need never fear goods to be had : the merchants' warehouses are 
always open ; and they may supply themselves upon all occasions, 
as they want and as their customers call. 

' ' He, then, that keeps his credit unshaken, has a double stock ; 
I mean, His an addition to his real stock, and often superior to it ; 
nay, I have known several considerable tradesmen in this City, who 
have traded with great success, and to a very considerable degree, 
and yet have not had at bottom one shilling real stock ; but by the 
strength of their reputation, being sober and diligent, and having 



LIFE OF DE FOE. . 457 

with care preserved the character of honest men, and the credit of 
their business by cautious dealing and punctual payments, they 
have gone on till the gain of their trade has effectually established 
them, and they have raised estates out of nothing." 

Again : — " A tradesman drest up fine, with his long wig and 
sword, may go to the ball when he pleases, for he is already drest up 
in the habit ; like a piece of counterfeit money, he is brass washed 
over with silver, and no tradesman will take him current ; he may 
go to the merchant's warehouse, and buy anything with money, but 
nobody will deal with him without it ; he may write upon his edged 
hat, as a certain tradesman, after having been once broken and set 
up again — ' I neither give nor take credit/ and, as others set up in 
their shops, ( No trust by retail/ so he may say, ' No trust by 
wholesale/ In short, thus equipped, he is truly a tradesman in 
masquerade, and must pass for such wherever he is known. How 
long it may be before his dress and he may suit, is not hard to 
guess. Some will have it that this expensive way of living began 
among the tradesmen first; that is to say, among the citizens of 
London ; and that their eager resolved pursuit of that empty and 
meanest kind of pride, called imitation — viz., to look like gentry, 
and appear above themselves — drew them into it. It has, indeed, 
been a fatal custom, but it has been too long a City vanity. If 
men of quality lived like themselves, men of no quality would strive 
to live, not like themselves ; if those had plenty, these would have 
profusion ; if those had enough, these would have excess ; if those 
had what was good, these would have what was rare and exotic — I 
mean as to season, and, consequently, dear. And this is one of 
the ways that has worn out so many tradesmen before their time. 

" This extravagance, wherever it began, had its first rise among 
those sorts of tradesmen, who, scorning the society of their shops 
and customers, applied themselves to rambling to courts and plays ; 
kept company above themselves, and spent their hours in such com- 
pany as lives always above them. This could not but bring great 
expense along with it ; and that expense would not be confined to the 
bare keeping such company abroad; but soon showed itself in a living 
like them at home, whether the tradesman could support it or no. 



458 life or DE FOE. 

" Keeping high company abroad certainly brings on visitings and 
high treatings at home ; and these are attended with costly furni- 
ture, rich clothes, and dainty tables. How these things agree with 
a trademan's income, 'tis easy to suggest; and that, in short, these 
measures have sent so many tradesmen to the Mint and to the Fleet, 
where I am witness to it, that they have still carried on their expen- 
sive living, till they have come at last to starving and misery ; but 
have been so used to it, that they could not abate it, or, at least, 
not quite le-ave it off, though they wanted the money to pay for it." 

Again : — " I cannot but mention one thing here (though I pur- 
pose to give you one discourse on that subject by itself), namely, 
the great and indispensable obligation there is upon a tradesman 
always to acquaint his wife with the truth of his circumstances; and 
not to let her run on in ignorance, till she falls with him down the 
precipice of an unavoidable ruin ; a thing no prudent woman should 
do, and therefore will never take amiss a husband's plainness in that 
particular case. But I reserve this to another place, because I am 
rather directing my discourse at this time to the tradesman at his 
beginning, and, as it may be supposed, unmarried." 

I must stop somewhere with my quotations ; and I might as well 
stop here, without I am prepared to transcribe the whole of two 
volumes of the best work I ever read, for sound principle and good 
advice given to young men in the middle ranks of life, starting in 
the world. It has been said that the study of this work laid the 
foundation of the character of the great Benjamin Franklin ; it is 
Franklin all over, and one particular passage Franklin has adopted 
as his own, changing the circumstances, trades, professions, or 
callings of the actors in the scene ; it is this : — 

" I have heard of a young apothecary, who, setting up in a part 
of the town where he had not much acquaintance, and fearing much 
whether he should get into business, hired a man acquainted with 
such business, and made him be every morning between five and 
six, and often late in the evenings, working at the great mortar, 
pounding and beating, though he had nothing to do with it but 
beating some very needless thing, that all his neighbours might hear 
it, and find that he was in full employ, being at work early and late, 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 459 

and that, consequently, he must be a man of vast business, and have 
a great practice ; and the thing was well laid, and took accordingly ; 
for the neighbours, believing he had business, brought business to 
him; and the reputation of having a trade, made a trade for him." 

Next appeared a pamphlet, entitled " Augusta Triumphans ; or, 
the Way to make London the most flourishing City in the Universe 
— 1. By establishing an University where Gentlemen may have 
Academical Education under the eye of their Friends," &c. &c. 

Poor fellow ! — the candle of life is now beginning to flicker in 
the socket — the appointed time of his departure (1731) was fast 
approaching ; yet, for the prospects of mental cultivation for some 
far distant generation of his race, he, with his declining strength, 
could exert himself for a University at home — the London Univer- 
sity; on which he says : — 

" We have been a brave and learned people ; but are insensibly 
dwindling into an effeminate, superficial race. Our young gentle- 
men are sent to the universities, but not under restraint and cor- 
rection as formerly ; not to study, but to drink ; not for furniture 
for the head, but a feather for the cap ; merely to say they have 
been at Oxford or Cambridge, as if the air of those places inspired 
knowledge without application." 

With the literary labours of one of England's greatest sons, for 
honesty and talent and consistency, we have done ; the darkness of 
age was fast beclouding his energetic mind ; and poor Daniel De Foe 
had ceased to be a writer. For the following account of the latter 
years of De Foe — useful as showing his position in life at the time 
— we are indebted to Mr. Henry Baker, the celebrated natural 
philosopher, who married one of De Foe's daughters : — 

" In the year 1724, Mr. Henry Baker engaged in an undertaking 
which required his spending some days every week at Newington. 
Amongst the first who desired his acquaintance there was Mr. De 
Foe, a gentleman well known by his writings, who had newly built 
there a very handsome house, as a retirement from London, and 
amused his time either in the cultivation of a large and pleasant 
garden, or in the pursuit of his studies, which he found means of 
making very profitable. He was now at least sixty years of age, 



460 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

afflicted with the gout and stone, but retained all his mental facul- 
ties entire. Mr. Baker readily accepted his invitation, and was so 
pleased with his conversation, that he seldom came to Newington 
without paying a visit to Mr. De Foe. He met usually at the tea- 
table his three lovely daughters, who were admired for their beauty, 
their education, and their prudent conduct; and if sometimes 
Mr. De Foe's disorders made company inconvenient, Mr. Baker was 
entertained by them, either singly or together, and that commonly 
in the garden, when the weather was favourable. Mr. Baker very 
soon discovered the superior excellencies of Miss Sophia, the youngest 
daughter, of whose person and manners he speaks in strains of the 
highest eulogium. He knew nothing of Mr. De Foe's circumstances; 
only imagined, from his very genteel way of living, that he must be 
able to give his daughter a decent portion ; he did not suppose a 
large one. On speaking to Mr. De Foe, he sactioned his proposals,, 
and said, he hoped he should be able to give her a certain sum 
specified; but when urged to the point some time afterwards, his 
answer was, that formal articles he thought unnecessary ; that he 
could confide in the honour of Mr. Baker ; that, when they talked 
before, he did not know the true state of his affairs ; that he found 
he could not part with any money at present, but at his death his 
daughter's portion would be more than he had promised ; and he 
offered his own bond as a guarantee for the payment." 

These money matters with daughters produced a breach and 
coolness; but eventually, in two or more years, the young couple 
were married, Mr. De Foe giving a bond on his house at Newington 
for £500, to be paid to Mr. Baker after his death. The bond is 
dated April 5, 1729; and the young couple were married at the 
latter end of the same month. 

At the time that he was living in his large new-built house at 
Stoke Newington, De Foe was in embarrassed circumstances, as he 
had been through the whole course of his life ; and was undergoing 
a constant process of threats, writs, and confinements ; and he could 
say with the prophet : — " I have nourished and brought up children, 
and they have rebelled against me;" for his eldest son deceived him 
by keeping property entrusted to him for the benefit of the whole 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 461 

family ; probably this would be the Daniel De Foe I have met with 
in the books of Doctors' Commons, as a sailor in the royal navy. 
On this subject De Foe wrote to Mr. Baker, his son-in-law, the 
following letter : — 

w Dear Mr. Baker, — I have your very kind and affec'onate letter 
of the 1st j but not come to my hand 'till y e 10th ; where it had 
been delayed I kno' not. As your kind manner, and kinder thought, 
from w ch it flows (for I take all yoii say to be, as I always believed 
you to be, sincere and Nathaniel-like, without guile), was a par- 
ticular satisfacc'on to me ; so the stop of a letter, however it hap- 
pened, deprived me of that cordial too many days, considering how 
much I stood in need of it, to support a mind sinking under the 
weight of an afflicc'on too heavy for my strength ; and looking on 
myself as abandoned of every comfort, every friend, and every rela- 
tive, except such only as are able to give me no assistance. 

u I was sorry you should say at y e beginning of your letter, you 
were debarred seeing me. Depend upon my sincerity for this : I 
am far from debarring you. On y e contrary, it would be a greater 
comfort to me than any I now enjoy, that I could have yo r agree- 
able visits w th safety, and could see both you and my dearest Sophia, 
could it be without giving her y e grief of seeing her father in tenebris 
[in prison] , and under y e load of insupportable sorrow. I am sorry 
I must open my griefs so far as to tell her, it is not y e blow I rec d 
from a wicked, perjur'd, and contemptible enemy, that has broken 
in upon my spirit ; w ch , as she well knows, has carryed me on thro' 
greater disasters than these. But it has been the injustice, unkind- 
ness, and I must say, inhuman dealing of my own son w ch has both 
ruined my family, and, in a word, has broken my heart ; and as I 
am at this time under a weight of very heavy illness, w ch I think 
will be a fever, I take this occasion to vent my grief in y e breasts 
who I know will make a prudent use of it, and tel] you, that nothing 
but this has conquered or could conquer me. Et tu ! Brute. I 
depended upon him, I teusted him, I gave up my two dear unpro- 
vided children into his hands ; but he has no compassion, and suffers 
them and their poor dying mother to beg their bread at his door, 



462 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

and to crave, as if it were an alms, what he is bound under hand 
and seal, besides the most sacred promises, to supply them with : 
himself, at y e same time, living in a profusion of plenty. It is too 
much for me. Excuse my infirmity. I can say no more : my heart 
is too full. I only ask one thing of you as a dying request. Stand 
by them when I am gone, and let them not be wronged, while he is 
able to do them right. Stand by them as a brother ; and if you have 
anything within you owing to my memory, who have bestowed on 
you the best gift I had to give, let y m not be injured and trampled 
on by false pretences and unnatural reflections. I hope they will 
want no help but that of comfort and council ; but that they will 
indeed want, being too easie to be manag'd by words and promises. 

" It adds to my grief that it is so difficult to me to see you. I 
am at a distance from Lond n in Kent : nor have I a lodging in 
London, nor have I been at that place in the Old Bailey ; since I 
wrote you I was removed from it. At present I am weak, having 
had more fits of fever that have left me low. But those things 
much more. 

" I have not seen son or daughter, wife or child, many weeks, 
and kno' not which way to see them. They dare not come by 
water, and by land here is no coach, and I kno* not what to do. 

" It is not possible for me to come to Enfield, unless you would 
find a retired lodging for me, where I might not be known, and 
might have the comfort of seeing you both now and then ; upon 
such a circumstance, I could gladly give the days to solitude, to 
have the comfort of half an hour now and then with you both, for 
two or three weeks. But just to come and look at you, and retire 
immediately, His a burthen too heavy. The parting will be a price 
beyond the enjoyment. 

" I would say (I hope) with comfort, that His yet well, I am so 
near my journey's end, and am hastening to the place where y e 
weary are at rest, and where the wicked cease to trouble ; be it 
that the passage is rough, and the day stormy, by what way soever 
He pleases to bring me to the end of it, I desire to finish life with' 
this temper of soul in all cases : Te Deum laudamus, 

" I congratulate you on y c occasion of yo r happy advance in y r 



LIFE OF DE FOE. 463 

employment. May all you do be prosperous, and all you meet 
with, pleasant ; and may you both escape the tortures and troubles 
of uneasie life. May you sail y r dangerous voyage of life with a 
forcing wind, and make the port of heaven without a storm. 

" It adds to my grief that I must never see the pledge of your 
mutual love — my little grandson. Give him my blessing, and may 
he be to you both your joy in youth, and your comfort in age, and 
never add a sigh to your sorrow. But, alas ! that is not to be 
expected. Kiss my dear Sophy 1 once more for me; and if I must 
see her no more, tell her this from a father that loved her above all 
his comforts to his last breath. 

"Yo r unhappy, "D. F. 

"About two miles from Greenwich, Kent. 

"P.S. — I wrote you a letter some months ago, in answer to one 
from you about selling y e house; but you never signified to me 
whether you received it or not. I have not the policy of assurance; 
I suppose my wife or Hannah may have it. 

"Idem, "D. F." 

On the 24th of April, 1731, this poor neglected genius — this 
champion of free trade and civil and religious liberty, and consistent 
champion too — was called to his rest, at his lodgings in Cripplegate 
St. Giles, and was buried two or three days afterwards in Bunhill 
Fields Cemetery; where he lies in humble state, among the illus- 
trious dead of Nonconformity. 

On my visiting that sacred spot of departed patriotism — the last 
solemn resting-place of the mortal remains of Daniel De Foe, 
Bunhill Fields Cemetery — I was struck with the condition of the 
tombstone, which was broken, and the inscriptions, two or three, 
obliterated by neglect and the corrosive influence of time and at- 
mosphere. I pointed this gravestone to the sexton : — "That tomb- 
stone is broken, and the inscriptions are worn off through the 
corrosive influence of the atmosphere." "Yes sir, the lightning 

1 Was this the individual alluded to as being a consolation to a poor troubled father, 
who read a great deal and wrote down many excellent things during a period of afflic- 
tion of twenty-eight years ? — I believe it was. 



464 LIFE OF DE FOE. 

did it," was the reply. Lightning did it — impossible ! The tomb 
of De Foe requiring lightning from heaven to destroy it ! This 
truly is one way of obliterating the memorial of departed greatness; 
for De Foe was both great and good — yes, he was a good man. 
What ! — the white reeky haze of the sulphurous exhalations of the 
vale of Sodom and Gomorrah here ? Forbid it, Heaven ! Daniel 
De Foe's last resting-place to be torn up by fire from heaven ! — 
he; one of the first writers on free trade and political economy, 
and every branch of civil and religious liberty, in all seasons of 
prosperity or national danger — he ; not only statesman but philan- 
thropist — be torn up or disturbed, in his last resting-place, by fire 
from heaven ! Impossible ! The tomb is broken of that man, who 
dared to show to arbitrary powers in church and in state ; how to 
pull their house about their ears— THE SHORTEST WAY. 

SlVf 

lSc£- 



THE END. 



F. Pickton, Printer, Perry's Place, 29, Oxford Street, London. 



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